Hughes: Arizona needs candidates who work for us all

In my ninth year as a surgical technician in the Valley, I’m proud of the work I’ve done, but feeling increasingly pessimistic about the growing struggles I see our community facing that our state elected officials must address.

More than ever in my career, I’m seeing patients going without one of the most basic necessities — a roof over their heads.

Without housing, people are at higher risk of exacerbated preexisting medical conditions, new health problems like transferable diseases, and harmful weather exposure that can cause dehydration and heatstroke.

Even for those with housing, many patients still have to pick and choose the health care they receive instead of getting the care they need because of high costs, resulting in inadequate treatment and more health issues down the line.

These outcomes are not only detrimental to quality of life, they’re harmful to the entire community as they require more emergency care, increasing health care costs and reducing available resources for all.

For our community to be its best, we have to take care of our people. Despite our $5 billion budget surplus, the legislature did little to nothing to alleviate these challenges, and instead carved out tax cuts for movie producers and put up more barriers to voting.

I implore my fellow Arizonans to consider this at the ballot and vote for candidates who work for the people, not themselves. It’s storming right now for many of us that are in the thick of these issues, and unless they are addressed, our problems will continue to get worse.