Everyone wants to live a long, happy, and productive life. If you’re working class in America, that’s tough to do.

Last month, I asked Americans to share their stories about how financial stress is affecting their lives. The response was overwhelming, heartbreaking, and infuriating. Working people are dying years before they should. Stress kills.

Put simply: Being poor or working class in America is a death sentence.

Patrick from Missouri wrote: “Living paycheck to paycheck while supporting a family stresses me out. We are always just one financial emergency from being homeless.”

Taryn from Alabama shared that she pays $400 for her children’s asthma medication. On top of struggling to pay for groceries and basic utilities, she worries about astronomical medical bills every time her daughters go to the hospital.

I recently asked a crowd in rural Wisconsin: “What is it like living paycheck to paycheck?” Their responses? “You can’t keep the heat on.” “You have to figure out how to eat between paychecks.” “You have to choose between getting glasses for yourself or your kids.”

Sadly, these stories are not unique. This is what life looks like for millions of working-class Americans. They are struggling. They are exhausted. And they are dying far too young.

A recent report I released as ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee found that the bottom 50 percent of Americans can expect to live seven fewer years than those in the top 1 percent.

In some places, the gap is even wider. If you live in a rural, working-class county, you are likely to die 10 years earlier than someone in a wealthy suburb.

For example, if you live in McDowell County, West Virginia, where the median household income is just $27,682 a year, you can expect to live 69 years.

Meanwhile, just 350 miles away in Loudoun County, Virginia, where the median income is $142,299, life expectancy is 84 years—a 15-year gap.

Why? It’s simple. Day after day, the struggle just to survive takes a horrific toll on a person’s body and mind. Financial stress kills.

If your landlord raises your rent by 30 percent and you can’t afford it, what do you do? Where do you live? Will your kids be forced to sleep in a car?

If you get sick, and end up with a $20,000 hospital bill, will you go bankrupt? Or will bill collectors hound you every day?

If you make $15 dollars an hour, will you have to make a choice between paying for childcare or the prescription medication you need to survive?

That stress doesn’t go away as you get older. Susan from Michigan told my office: “I am nearing retirement with a disabled husband who receives Social Security. If Social Security goes away, we will not be able to live.”

Over 20 percent of seniors in America are trying to survive on $15,000 a year or less. How does ANYONE survive on that kind of income? If that’s not stress, I don’t know what is.

There is a reason why the life expectancy in the United States is lower than almost every other wealthy nation, even though we’re spending twice as much per capita on health care as they do.

And that reason is not complicated. Virtually every major country has a far stronger social safety net than we do, a safety net that protects their citizens from poverty, illness, homelessness, and lack of educational opportunity.

We must make sure every American has the same protection.

Here are just a few initiatives that would significantly reduce stress and extend life expectancy for Americans.

First, health care is a human right, not a privilege. Regardless of your income, you should be able to walk into a doctor’s office and not worry about the cost. We need a health care system designed to keep people well, not to make the CEOs of the pharmaceutical industry obscenely rich. It is estimated that Medicare for All would save 68,000 lives a year. Knowing that health care is available, with no out of pocket cost, would go an enormous way in easing the anxieties that too many Americans experience.

Second, we need a minimum wage of at least $17 an hour. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality and record-breaking corporate profits, we cannot tolerate millions of workers being unable to feed their families because they work for totally inadequate wages.

Third, we must end the international embarrassment of the United States being the only major country on earth not to guarantee paid family and medical leave to every worker. Women should not be forced to go back to work a couple of weeks after having a baby.

Fourth, we must expand and strengthen Social Security so that every senior can retire with dignity and every person with a disability can live with the security they need. Americans should not be forced to live out their retirement years struggling to buy food or keep their homes warm.

Finally, we can increase life expectancy by ensuring that every child has access to a free, high-quality education from daycare through graduate school. It is not acceptable that today Americans who only have a high school diploma will likely live 8.5 fewer years than someone with a college degree. That gap has more than tripled in the last 30 years.

We are the richest country in the history of the world. There is no excuse for people dying young because of the financial stress that they deal with every day.

Bottom line: we need to create an economy and a government that works for the many, not the few. That mission will not only improve the financial well-being of the working class—it will extend the lives of the vast majority of Americans.

Let’s get it done.