Dr. Keith Dveirin is a Tucson pediatrician and a former president of the Arizona Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

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Everyone agrees that the current health-care system is broken. People disagree on how to fix it. Proposition 101, the so-called "Medical Choice for Arizona" Act, is not the solution to today's health-care ills.

Proposition 101 is a poorly conceived attempt to stop health-care reform in Arizona. Its supporters claim that it guarantees the rights of Arizonans to make their own health care choices. Ironically, what it actually does is limit the choices we have to respond to the current health-care crisis. To make matters worse, it enshrines these limits in a constitutional amendment so that Arizona will be stuck with limited choices for years (if not generations) to come.

Arizona, like the rest of the country, is in a health-care crisis. Twenty percent of Arizonans, or 1.2 million people, are uninsured. Many others are underinsured, having a health-insurance policy in name that does not cover the real costs or needs of their families. Individuals with pre-existing conditions often can't get insurance at all. The cost of health insurance keeps rising, forcing businesses to raise employee contributions or stop providing health care altogether.

In today's health-care crisis, we need all options for health-care reform to be on the table and not limit our choices for ideological reasons. And, make no mistake about it, Proposition 101 is ideologically driven. The writers of the proposition are members of an extreme fringe group of a small number of physicians who believe that insurance companies and government should have no role at all in health care. If they had their way, there would be no Medicare, no VA, no AHCCCS and no KidsCare.

They want us to go back to an idealized time (the so-called good old days) when families paid their physicians in cash or chickens or a fresh apple pie or whatever else they had.

In their view, insurance should not pay for preventive-care checkups, mammograms, pregnancy care, immunizations or medications. Insurance, if it exists at all, should cover catastrophic care only, and the rest should be left up to the individual. Would you, or your family, be better off in such a system?

This is not a good solution to the health-care crisis. The problem now is that too few people have insurance to get the health care they need. Placing limits on our choices for health care reform, which make it harder to get health care, is not the answer.

Moreover, Proposition 101 is poorly worded and vague (it does not even define basic terms such as "health care"). Experts in health-care law say that it could threaten the AHCCCS system, which provides care to million low-income and disabled Arizonans, and KidsCare, which serves 65,000 children in families of the working poor.

It also could threaten Medicare and the Veterans Affairs health system in Arizona, and may be in conflict with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and other federal laws.

All of this means that if Proposition 101 were to pass, it would ultimately be subject to the interpretation of the courts, at the state's expense.

Proposition 101 is poorly conceived and poorly written, and just a bad idea. To paraphrase both presidential candidates, this is not the health-care change we want, or the health-care change we need or the health-care change we can believe in.

Proposition 101 is not "Medical Choice for Arizona." It is "No Choice for Arizona."