Thankfully it was caught early. Ross was private about it at first, but when even his military benefits didn’t cover his treatment, he said, “I got genuinely upset for the first time since the Air Force. I didn’t yell because I told myself I wouldn’t, but it was upsetting.” And that’s why he ran for the House in Indiana in 1994 - and he won.
He was in his second term in the Senate when the Democrats asked him to run for President. He ran on a healthcare platform, but by then he had a number of pet issues - he didn’t like the way Iraq was handled, he hated No Child Left Behind and the attacks on the arts, and he was a staunch advocate for medical marijuana and the reason it got declassified as a Schedule I drug. But his legacy is Rosscare, and I gotta say, it’s great.