A little more about AzHHA

So while we get a chance to free write I would love to talk more about my internship. As part of my internship each week we get to go on field trips. I love the field trips because they give my intern group a chance to bond. For this field trip, we visited the Arizona Capital. I had never been there before so it was an awesome adventure. We spent the morning in the office learning about Medicare and Medicaid from Barb (a lobbyist) who really helped answer some Obamacare questions and tell us about the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Everyone seemed to enjoy that and I learned a lot.

At the capital we roamed around the museum and got to learn about AZ history. An older guy was our tour guide so he was able to tell us lots about the museum. After our tour Barb introduced us to Heather Carter, an AZ house representative. Heather told us about her job and then showed us into the House of Representatives chamber where they actually vote on bills. We each got to sit in a representative’s desk and had a mock voting process. People got up and addressed the Speaker formally on a “bill” regarding texting and driving. After a few people got up and argued for or against, we officially voted. The bill did not pass by one vote.

It was amazing to see the actual process these representatives go through. Its very difficult to pass a bill and this is only at the state level! I have two people to interview this week, I'm worried that my group won't meet quota. Other groups seem to be really on top of it. I hope that my group can get it together and we can get some more interviews going. Friday we will begin to organize themes regardless. We need to see what our community members have in common so we can begin to create solutions to solve their problems.