An Emerging Healthcare Crisis

By Daniel J. Stone

A crisis is developing in healthcare in Los Angeles related to the problems of the uninsured, emergency room overcrowding and HMO issues. The state legislature lacks the experience necessary to address complex healthcare issues. We must have more healthcare expertise in Sacrmento.

The state legislature lacks the experience to deal with difficult healthcare problems. The sum total of experience in both houses is a chiropractor, a nurse, an oral surgeon and a dental hygienist. In contrast there are thirty former local government officials, fifteen attorneys and nineteen business people in the Assembly alone. The absence of healthcare expertise and lack of diversity does not serve the people of California. As a primary care physician with ten years of clinical experience, a Masters in Public Health and an MBA, Dr. Daniel Stone is well qualified to provide much needed leadership in the area of healthcare.

Dr. Stone will fight to use tobacco settlement dollars to shore up our failing emergency medical system. Those dollars were taken from the cigarette companies because of the adverse health effects of their products. Tobacco money should be devoted to healthcare, not to the routine priorities of local or state politicians. Dr. Stone will work to establish a standard list of healthcare benefits for insurance in California so that individuals can go to a state website instead of their HMO to find out about their benefits. Dr. Stone will work to improve the ease with which employers can provide health insurance and to ensure that the state does a better job of using available Federal dollars to provide insurance to the California's children. A vote for Dr. Stone on March 7 is a vote to reform healthcare and to improve access to critical health services.