Recently the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association released a study calculating the economic impact of proposed massive cuts to AHCCCS (Medicaid) and the Arizona Department of Health Services. It’s devastating.

We got here by spending too much money and not taking in enough revenue. We got here by letting the good times roll and not planning for when the music died. We got here by fixating on an adolescent view of self-interest, and not seeing how it depends on collective interest. We got here by playing yesterday’s games with yesterday’s rules in today’s dramatically changed environment.

The Arizona We Want. To realize that vision, we need to operate out of a different playbook, one that utilizes a high level of civic engagement at all levels of society to develop economic, social and cultural strategies based on the principles of systems ecology. We are beginning to see the fruits of this at the local level in Health in a New Key communities and elsewhere, but we need to expand our efforts at the level of state policy and leadership. Tax reform, economic development, education, health care, transportation, energy, public safety, the environment – all require investment in bottom-up, top-down and cross-sector participatory planning. That’s what all of us should be engaged in now.

Opportunities abound. Don’t get distracted or discouraged by the noise.