Arizonans for Responsible Health Care…

is an independent, non-profit group of private Arizona citizens formed with the specific goal of effecting major reform in health care to improve quality, access and affordability for all Arizona residents.

Arizonans for Responsible Health Care’s (AFRHC) core mission is:

• To provide health care driven by ‘best practice’ standards of care and focused on the continuous improvement of healthcare outcomes,
• To assure accessibility to this high quality health care for all legal Arizona Residents,
• To reduce the ever escalating cost of care for all segments of the community and achieve administrative cost efficiency in the access and delivery of care, and
• To share the total cost of care along with the savings from efficiency and quality improvement gains equitably across the entire community
  

Board members are citizen volunteers who attend semi-monthly work sessions for Arizonans for Responsible Health Care. Board/steering committee members include doctors, pharmacists, consumers, insurance executives and large employer health plan management professionals. The combination of our board members incorporates front line experience in all aspects of health care and its delivery exposing the specific concerns, shortcomings, and latest trends with the greatest potential to effect beneficial change in health care for the community at large. Please see our list of board members at the end of this summary.

The AFRHC goal is to bring about the creation of a non-profit Arizona Health Care Agency and the Arizona Health Plan through a voter initiative. This partnership among government, private sector and non-government organizations (NGOs) is structured to give every citizen their personal choice of any licensed, board certified primary care physician in good standing with their medical boards from which to obtain their health care according to best practice standards of the day and the provisions of the Arizona Health Care Agency (AHCA) and Arizona Health Plan (AHP).  The patient and their primary physician will then decide on the necessity and appropriateness of using specialists for additional care.  Our reform embraces a free market dynamic allowing all insurance plans to coexist alongside a publicly funded comprehensive health plan with a single set of health care benefits, administration, and payment processes.

It also allows the benefits, efficiency and quality improvement potential afforded by collecting, organizing, and reporting all outcomes data from all health care encounters under one data warehouse and analysis system. This system will in turn identify which are ‘best-practices’ in medicine, what proper clinical standards will lead to best outcomes, and which providers are achieving those clinical quality of care standards. Following from that, this information will then be applied across the entire community fairly and equitably for the benefit to all Arizonans. It simultaneously allows every health care service provider/physician/hospital the opportunity to compete in the market on all aspects of care quality, customer service, and efficiency.

Furthermore, AHP does not increase administrative costs because it uses existing public administrative arms in the state to administer payments to all healthcare services providers. At the same time, AHCA/AHP will maintain controls to assure payment only for necessary medical care that is evidence-based to achieve verifiable clinical improvement and disease management.

Funding for AHP and AHCA will come from a wide range of sources that will distribute the funding costs equitably and incrementally across the entire population of citizen residents, visitors, and employers in Arizona. This insures that no one group or individuals are unfairly burdened by extreme costs of paying for care and avoids personal bankruptcies that further deteriorate ones ability to obtain care in the future and likewise increases associated cost when deteriorating disease and injury are left untreated or treated inadequately. AHP will unburden employers by significantly reducing a major portion of their current health plan expense. Reversing those health plan expense deductions will likewise provide a much smaller but needed amount in business income tax revenue for the State previously avoided.

AHP will also have a strong focus on disease prevention and health promotion. AHCA will coordinate with existing statewide organizations to align forces to drive health improvements, wellness, and prevention across the Arizona community with various foundations, for-profit and non-profit organizations, educational institutions and government agencies working on medical encounter data collection, clinical standards, and the development of electronic medical records. This coordination will help us achieve better physician and patient compliance with disease prevention and ongoing management, a key to reducing bad medical outcomes, associated costs, and further disease deterioration among chronic patient populations.

AFRHC has already produced a 90-page legislative proposal under a voter initiative and is conducting presentations and discussions with a wide range of groups, businesses, and associations about the non-partisan value of our initiative. We are showing how AFRHC is a solution for the vast majority of our community helping to deal with cost of, declining quality in, and ever shrinking access to quality healthcare for all citizens in Arizona. Likewise it will bring tremendous development and growth for every business in Arizona.

Arizonans for Responsible Health Care Board    

Glenn Ray, founder of Arizonans for Responsible Health Care, is a resident of Mesa, Arizona. Glenn lives in state legislative District 22 and ran for the Arizona State Legislature in 2004. He is a business professional and has served as a senior systems analyst for computer consulting firms and currently is an employee of US Airways. In addition, Mr. Ray has been in the military for almost 19 years, eleven of that with the Arizona National Guard. He is a decorated two-time Veteran, having served Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-91 and recently returned from Operation Iraqi Freedom in December of 2005. As Platoon SGT US Army/Army National Guard, he was awarded a Bronze Star in Mosul, Iraq and a Meritorious Service Medal for operations in Kuwait. He was also responsible for training, developing risk assessments, and operational planning for 120 Albanian Commandos that successfully conducted over 75 combat missions in Northern Iraq. Glenn was recently offered a direct commission to 2LT in the Arizona National Guard. He currently works for the Arizona National Guard as the Safety NCO for Task Force Diamondback performing AZ Border construction missions.

Glenn has a Bachelor’s Degree in E-Commerce and Master's degree in Technology Business Management and is also working on a Master's in Homeland Security.

Pete Cerchiara has over 25 years of experience in employee benefits and health plans management with Fortune 200 firms in the New York Metropolitan area and Arizona such as, Dun and Bradstreet, CPC International, Becton Dickinson, Mercedes Benz of North America, Salt River Project, and Maricopa County. In addition to his corporate and government sector health plan management experience, he also operated a benefits management outsource business in the mid 90’s in Arizona. In 2000, he helped start the first employer health care coalition in Arizona, Southwest Health Alliance, where he served as board chair and president, and helped employers understand value purchasing and install health care quality improvements tools in their employee health plans. Mr. Cerchiara holds a BA with honors in Sociology from New York University and State University of New York, at Purchase, NY, and an insurance producer’s license from New York Life.

Mr. Keiser is a Registered Pharmacist with a BS in Pharmacy and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Toledo. He was also a Board Member for One Way Farm, a not for profit group home for abused children.

Karl Leuba is medically retired from a career as a truck driver due to a curable illness that went untreated because of costs. Karl is a long time resident of Phoenix, Arizona, former local Radio and Television Journalist and Former Judge of Associated Press Awards for Excellence in Journalism, and frequent contributor to that wire service. He is active in community affairs ranging from fund raising for United Way and the American Cancer Society to service on the Board of Directors of the Arizona Division of American Youth Hostels. As a veteran, he is a grateful recipient of Health Care Benefits from the Veterans Administration and seeks to extend similar or more comprehensive heath care benefits to my fellow citizens. Presently, Karl blogs on Gather.com, while enjoying the freedom of his retirement.

Joe Otto has over 40 years of experience and a record of achievements in marketing, strategic, long range planning, database management and program implementation. Most recently he was officer and Vice President of Marketing Services for WellPoint, a leading health benefits company with 34 million members nationwide. Prior WellPoint he was Director of Sales and Marketing for PacifiCare Health Systems, part of United Healthcare, the nation’s second largest health care service company.

Mr. Otto was also Vice President Marketing – Major Accounts, RDI; Vice President Marketing Services, First Interstate Bank; Vice President Marketing, MRSI, Director of International Marketing Research and Business Development, Carnation Company; Director of Strategic Planning and Research, Mattel, Inc. and Senior Brand Supervisor at Procter & Gamble. He started his career with General Electric in their management training department after graduating from the University of Cincinnati with a Bachelor of Science.

Mary Schlotterer, MD, is a fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Her and her husband started private practice in Ahwatukee in 1993. Mary received both her medical degree and Bachelor of Science degree in microbiology at the University of Arizona. She completed her residency in Obstetrics and Genecology at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan and then worked for a staff model HMO for 2 years before moving back to Arizona. Dr Schlotterer has a long standing commitment to the medically underserved and has volunteered on Indian reservations near Sells, Arizona and in Mexico. She has also devoted part of her practice in South Phoenix. She has been on the front lines with patients and the insurance companies and recognizes the inefficiencies and inequities of our current healthcare system that impact the core stakeholders in health care, patients and doctors.

Michael G. Sills, MD has practiced medicine in the Phoenix area for nine years and is board certified by the American Board of Radiology. He is fellowship trained in Thoracic Radiology and Breast Imaging at the University of Colorado Medical School in Denver, following his residency in diagnostic radiology in Cleveland, Ohio and Denver, Colorado. He earned his medical degree from the University of California at Davis. Prior to his medical career, Dr. Sills worked as an aerospace systems engineer, specializing in ascent/orbital analysis and Space Shuttle payload integration. More recently, Dr. Sills has expanded his activities into the realms of political activism and blogging.