Ken Sumsion has the heart, the experience, and the know-how to represent our values and find the right solutions in the Utah legislature.

Government Accounting and Fiscal Responsibility
I will be a legislator who knows that the government funds are not the government's money, but the people's money. It is time for someone with fiscal and accounting expertise to apply the private sector business sense to government. I welcome the opportunity to be a voice for the taxpayers. I support returning your money to you.

Better Schools and Empowering Parents
First, we must recognize excellence in our schools, among both students and teachers. A system of merit pay for the best teachers is long overdue and not enough money is getting into the classroom. I will work to make school choice a reality, to allow parents and their children to obtain the best education. I favor raising our standards, enhancing teacher training and incentives in the areas of math and science - especially during the fourth, fifth and sixth grades. Our educational system should and can be the best in the world because we have great parents in our communities who are interested in their children's education.

Health Care Reform
Health care reform has become a hot topic. The concern I have is that our nation is moving towards socialized medicine. This will be a disaster. We need to stay with a market-driven system. Unfortunately, we have managed to remove the consumer from the market place. The consumer needs to regain the incentive to be a decision maker in their own health care. As an example, let me use Ken Sumsion. I work for BYU and have a health plan. Basically, when I go to the doctor I pay a $15 or $20 deductible and then my insurance covers the rest. Frankly, I don’t care if my doctor charges me $100 or $200. Also, I have no incentive to even review my charges for accuracy because outside of my deductible I’m not the one paying for it. This leads to higher medical costs. To many of our health insurance plans and government run medical programs have taken away our incentive as consumers to be price sensitive. I have over-simplified a complex system but in the end we need more competition with consumers engaged in true market decisions (March '08).