People count on our emergency rooms for immediate attention but even with medical insurance prompt care is not guaranteed. Patients sometimes have to wait 12-16 hours for 'urgent' medical care. This is dangerous and unacceptable. The problem is due to a variety of issues including the aging and growing population, barriers to seeing primary care providers, one-fifth of the state population lacking medical insurance, and frequent visits by chronic-disease sufferers.

Unburdening our emergency departments requires innovative thinking and real solutions, for example, patients with chronic illnesses who frequent emergency rooms should be diverted into a preventive home health care program that will save money and stop a major source of congestion in our emergency rooms.


Recent estimates of our medical workforce indicate that we lack sufficient numbers of nurses and physicians to handle the medical needs of Arizonans. We are at 80% of the physicians we require and only 73% of the nursing staff we need to safely care for our patients. These shortages are not unique to Arizona and represent a national trend. Beyond nurses and physicians, we have shortages of other medical personnel, including laboratory technicians, case managers, pharmacy staff, physical therapists, and many others.

The solution is to actively attract, train, and retain physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals. We must remove barriers to nursing education and guarantee competitive pay, increase primary care residency training, and offer relocation incentives for providers in needed specialties, for example.


Of the uninsured people in our state, over 80% of these families contain a member with a job. These individuals cannot afford the ever-increasing medical insurance premiums due to their limited incomes combined with the financial needs of their families. The working people of Arizona should not be further punished by lack of health insurance.

Here the solution is to extend health care coverage to all Arizonans. Recent St. Lukes Health Initiative findings show that people favor a publicly-funded system that will assure baseline medical care for everyone in the state with supplemental benefits linked to employment. Until such a comprehensive reform can be implemented, I favor broadening the AHCCCS program to include more uninsured families on a sliding-scale, need-based premium following the models of Vermont and Massachusetts.


Drug companies are generating record profits while our seniors have to make the gruesome decision to buy food or their prescribed medications.

The solution is to enable the state of Arizona to negotiate reasonable drug prices for patients enrolled in AHCCCS and eventually as a part of universal coverage..


Our current system is geared to respond to illnesses instead of preventing them in the first place. The problem is similar to one that fire departments face. It is better for all parties to have the fire department prevent fires through inspections and education than to have them respond to a blaze.

If we devote more attention to disease prevention through education and regular monitoring we will save health care costs, we will save emergency room space and we will prevent needless suffering.


Mental illness is an illness just like all the others that force people to seek medical attention. Unfortunately, there is an insurance bias against equal treatment of these problems and a shortage of specialized treatment facilities.

It will take legislative intervention to enforce mental health parity in Arizona. An example of what we must do to alleviate the situation is what we in southern Arizona have recently approved, a proposal that will establish psychiatric urgent care and inpatient facilities in Tucson.


It is hard to believe in the modern age of computers and internet that medical records continue to be largely paper based. Computerized medical records provide up-to the-minute, accurate patient information which can be life-saving in the event of an emergency. Electronic recordkeeping will also prevent dangerous prescription errors and save overall health care costs once implemented. If we can get our prescriptions filled at national pharmacy chains anywhere in the country, why can’t our medical records be similarly available to save our lives?

Such systems already exist. The Veterans Administration has been using a sophisticated electronic medical record system for over a decade. We need to establish a regional standardized securely-encrypted electronic medical recordkeeping system.


Our students must learn about healthy living early and often throughout their school years if we are to avoid expanding the health care crisis in the coming decades. Removing physical activity from the public school system is counterproductive. Providing unbalanced, fat-filled, highly-preserved, sugary meal options to our children sets a very bad example. It is also harmful to their health.

Regularly reinforced healthy living habits must become curricular requirements in our schools. Furthermore, junk-food vending machines must be removed from all school levels. Nutritional services must be enhanced to provide balanced meals containing minimally preserved, brightly colored fruits and vegetables.


The litigious climate in medicine is having a disastrous effect on the health care system. The largest problem resulting from this is that physicians are ordering costly and unnecessary tests and procedures out of fear instead of professional judgment. Everyone who pays for health insurance pays more because of this issue.

One solution could be the establishment of specialized medical courts for arbitration of medical malpractice cases. Another solution is a more systemic one: enhance the patient-physician relationship to promote better communication and familiarity which leads to improved overall medical care.


Our current health care system creates profit-driven medical decision making where trained medical professionals are forced into suboptimal treatment plans by accountants.

The solution is to encourage more universal health care. Broadening the AHCCCS program to include more uninsured families on a sliding-scale, need-based premium is a good start until comprehensive universal coverage can be implemented.


Currently when insurance companies want to increase their rates, they merely have to notify the state. The state cannot stop or even examine the validity/necessity for the rate increases. This is largely the result of a lack of appropriate oversight by the Legislature.

To correct the problem, we need oversight of these issues and an examination of the net profits of these insurance companies.

Paid for by Heinz for Arizona