In “Your Story” we celebrate the remarkable stories of everyday Americans from diverse backgrounds — in their own words — showcasing the enduring spirit of Our America’s Hometown Heroes across the nation.
Reagan Box of Georgia is a nationally recognized horse trainer and a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2026. She is running on a platform of eliminating burdensome government regulations which stifle economic prosperity.
“After high school, I felt lost.
I attended college for five years, then was a runway model, studied art and history in Paris, conducted sea turtle research in the Florida Keys, and did mission work in Costa Rica.
And then I decided to move out west. I worked on a 40,000-acre ranch in New Mexico, and learned how to break, train, and show cutting horses at a national level. It was wild, isolated, and an eye-opener. I loved it.
I only had a $1,200/month salary, but they provided a house and paid my utilities. So you get pretty creative.
And so you can’t just go to the doctor or hospital. It’s an hour’s drive, and you can’t afford the gas. So many of us would either get the vets to look at us or since we doctored so many animals, we learned to doctor each other or ourselves.
And so a lot of the medicine we use for horses and cows, even our dogs, it’s the same medicine they would prescribe to us. And yet, if I went to the doctor and did this, it would cost me 10, 15, 20 times more.
I can get a vet to come out and x-ray my horse. For $350 they’ll drive out to my barn and take five or six x-rays. You tell me why it should cost two, three thousand dollars if I went to the hospital.
I don’t understand how we are allowing this to happen.
This one will blow your mind.
So I had a dog get bit by a rattlesnake and had to go to the vet and get anti-venom.
So the dog and human anti-venom are the same. It’s the same medicine, and humans and dogs get the same dosage. Now do you want to know what they charge for the human anti-venom compared to the dog anti-venom? This will blow your mind.
They’re charging over $10,000 per bag for the human anti-venom and the same anti-venom for my dog was $500. It just doesn’t even make sense.
Why is this? Regulatory capture and insurance, and they know we’re going to pay it because no one wants to get sick or die.”
