Anthony Brino

Health experts weigh in with burning matters they would like to see the candidates tackle on Wednesday night.

Prior to 2010, Arkansas lagged behind much of the country in healthcare IT. "I knew we were way behind," the state's health IT coordinator, who led the construction of Arkansas' statewide HIE, said. Now, the state's progress has garnered ONC's praise and, mostly, local stakeholder support.

Vanderbilt University economist Lawrence Van Horn, a self-proclaimed pessimist on healthcare, discusses ways to control costs in the near-term and for future generations.

The HIE, for which the state and CMS announced nearly $17 million in funding on Monday, will comprise the IT backbone for the smarter health system in Massachusetts that the new cost-containment law aims to create.