My Priorities
Education, healthcare and jobs are key issues that affect every household daily. Improving in these areas is crucial to making Colorado a place where working families can do more than merely survive. Colorado needs leaders that will show initiative and truly work for the values that will address the educational needs of our children, the healthcare needs of each and every family and promote the creation of jobs for hard-working people.
Jobs
Most every Coloradan faces unemployment at some point in their life. As your representative, I will work with my colleagues at the legislature to create jobs for the unemployed by stimulating the market. We are on an upward economic spiral right now but unless we attract big business to Colorado, we are always going to have a job shortage here. I will work to create a greener Colorado by strengthening our Department of Labor’s job training programs and cooperating with businesses to retrain our workforce.
Education and children
Great things can happen when we take action. Many of you know of the challenges that face
Colorado schools. Our own Meadow Point Elementary School has struggled to maintain adequate funding for their educational programs. Both of my adoptive daughters are students at Meadow Point and I was shocked to learn that the school could not afford to offer a music program to their students. A bit of activism has changed all of that. I was able to gather and donate a number of Instruments to the school. When the Parent Teacher Organization learned of the contribution, they stepped up and held a fundraiser to generate the money needed to refurbish the instruments. The school band had its first concert recently.
I have been an advocate for children for many years. There are many children who live in unacceptable circumstances, unable to voice their needs. During the past 10 years, I have served as a foster parent to nearly 50 children. I have seen a number of these tragic cases first hand and I am committed to establishing better policies and promoting public/private partnerships with the state’s
Department of Human Services and adoption agencies in order to prevent further abuse. Unconditional love and the developmental interventions are the two most significant components in resolving these problems.
Healthcare
Twenty-five years in the healthcare industry on both clinical and administrative sides have helped me to understand the many problems that we have with healthcare in this country. Within the last few decades healthcare has changed dramatically. We have moved from physician owned and operated practices to a managed care system in which insurance companies rather than doctors determine what medical care can and should be provided. For all of us patients, it means that a doctor is no longer responsible for the care that we receive. Insurance companies have taken over our medical care and they now decide what treatments and procedures can be performed. We now have an environment in which healthcare reform is so needed that whatever comes to fruition in the next few years will certainly be better. Proposed changes to our healthcare system will affect many people, better serve the uninsured, expand the benefits of Medicare and improve conditions for the health care professionals and patients alike.
