When making health care policy, he urged his audience to really consider social determinants of health — housing, income, transportation and nutrition — essentials for a person to live a healthy lifestyle.
“This is the problem I felt when I was in the legislature, sitting in your shoes,” Cansler said. “We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do the next two-year budget and we don’t spend so much time trying to figure out how to create a better long-term plan.
“Try to get ahead of that curve so that we are eventually reducing the cost of care and keeping people healthier because dealing with problems before they become crises is going to save us money in the long term,” he said. “As government, and I saw it the whole time I was involved, we spend all our time reacting to the next crisis rather than try to prevent crisis.”