Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Track to Arizona Politics

Phoenix Children’s believes every child in Arizona should have access to high-quality health care. Medicaid is critical to this aim. We urge our state’s representatives – especially Senators McCain and Flake – to stand up for Arizona and its children, and ensure that we do not end up on the losing side of this battle.

The ERA is the only method left to ensure women’s constitutional equality. The ERA has enjoyed massive public support for decades. Yet in Arizona, a state with historic high levels of women in the state Legislature, several women governors and at one time, five top state offices held by women, it can’t even get a hearing. What are they afraid of?

No government program is perfect, but Arizona’s Medicaid program – known as AHCCCS – is the gold standard when it comes to delivering quality, affordable health care. Our state’s Medicaid program uses an integrated, managed-care model that promotes competition and patient choice, controls costs and incentivizes preventative care.

Those of us who have been in the policy mix a long time noticed something different this year. For the first time since I can remember, advocates for public K-12 education openly opposed higher education funding.

Asking taxpayers to fund college will not make attending college any less expensive, and it certainly won’t make it “free.” David Garcia’s plan does nothing to reduce tuition and fees. Robert Samuels explains, “If you subsidize something but do not control its costs, it will not be able to achieve its policy goals.” Indeed.

There is no doubt that criminal justice and sentencing reform is needed in Arizona. But it is also important that the people or groups making proposals for change understand exactly what they are proposing, what the full impact of those changes would be on all stakeholders, and that in the rush to achieve results and re-apply for grant monies to support their work, that they do no harm. Do-gooders sometimes don’t “do good.”

To stay on the cutting edge and ahead of competition, technology companies need to always look forward to the next development or advancement. Our policymakers need to think with the same mindset. Unfortunately, the Border Adjustment Tax would be a major step backward with serious consequences for innovation.

The Peoria City Council insisted that the process allow Peoria residents to have a meaningful voice; that the city should do more than just give lip-service to public input. As the process developed, that ambition was solidly fulfilled.

Restoring the emergency dental benefit for adults brings an infectious disease approach to oral health, something we’ve long needed. Take care of the parent’s mouth, and the odds greatly increase that the child will have healthy teeth and gums.

As it stands, the AHCA would cut $839 billion in federal funds that help states, including Arizona, make sure that our most vulnerable citizens get the health care and long-term services and supports that they need.