On Saturday, Sept. 26, the Tucson Musicians Museum will host its 15th annual Celebration of Music and Culture online. While this is the first time the fundraiser will be entirely virtual, they're sticking with the theme of honoring local music figures who have "generously given of their time and talents to the TMM’s Mentorship Program for young people in the community."

The 2020 honorees are Ed Alexander, Bruce Halper, Frances Clary Covington, Crystal Stark, Nancy McCallion, Catherine Zavala and Robert E. Zucker. In addition, TMM will honor Adrian Negrette, a former student of the Mentor Program, as the Up and Coming Musician of the Year.

Funds raised through the celebration are used to help purchase instruments and books for students and for financial compensation to musicians working as mentors. The evening will include performances, the honoree ceremony and presentations by guest speakers including Bud Foster, Hana Tiede, Mark Irvin and former mayor Jonathan Rothschild.

TMM's mission is also to "further assist in the preservation of Tucson's sound by matching qualified professional musicians as mentors with qualified young musicians, who might otherwise be unable to afford such guidance."

The induction ceremony takes place from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26 from the Tucson Musicians Museum's website. For more information, visit the event page.

Thousands of students across Pima County will soon return to their classrooms as local public school districts solidify their plans for new hybrid models of instruction.

According to the county health department’s COVID-19 Progress Report, five of the nine health criteria are making “progress” and three have been officially “met.” The progress report tracks local disease data, healthcare capacity and public health capacity.

As COVID-19 data trends downward from its spike in June and July, many families have expressed interest in sending their children back to school. As a precaution, most districts are preparing to offer a hybrid model of in-person and remote instruction.

However, the Marana Unified School District is planning to offer families a fully in-person traditional learning option beginning Monday, Oct. 19.

“This is a critical topic, it’s a challenging topic, it’s a topic that’s proven to be emotional and divisive at times, but I think this community has an opportunity to come out the other end together and stronger together as we work through this process,” said Superintendent Dan Streeter during the Sept. 17 special board meeting.

MUSD received about 12,000 responses to a parent survey about learning model preferences. Streeter reported about 70 percent of families want to return to in-person classroom instruction and 30 percent want to remain in remote learning.

These numbers allow the district to begin planning logistically about class sizes, physical distancing in schools and other mitigation strategies.

WASHINGTON – The number of Arizonans without health insurance jumped to more than 800,000 last year, the third consecutive year of increases for the state, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau.

The number of uninsured also rose nationwide, but not as sharply as in Arizona. Nationally, the share of people without insurance rose from 8.9% in 2018 to 9.2% last year, the bureau said, while Arizona went from 10.6% to 11.3% in the same period.

And health experts in Arizona note that the latest numbers do not reflect the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year, which likely makes for an even gloomier picture this year.

“Probably anything you look at that’s estimated, as far as our uninsured rate, is an undercount of where things are right now,” said Dr. Dan Derksen, associate vice president of health sciences at the University of Arizona.

Analysts attribute the rise to a number of factors, not the least of which is uncertainty about the availability of coverage under the Affordable Care Act after years of attack by the Trump administration.

Allen Gjersvig, director of outreach and enrollment services for Arizona Alliance for Community Health Centers, points to what he calls an “awareness and education problem” that has left some uninsured unaware that they might still qualify for affordable coverage under the ACA, or Obamacare.

Gjersvig said “the vast majority” of the 809,000 uninsured people in Arizona could qualify for a tax credit that covers most of their monthly premiums, which could end up being less than $100 per month out of pocket. Some could even qualify for the tax credit and a reduction in deductibles and co-pay that Gjersvig said could cut out-of-pocket expenses to “less than $1 per month.”

“Based on Kaiser Family Foundation for 2018 data, we estimate that 323,000 or more Arizonans are eligible for no-cost coverage (AHCCCS) or low-cost coverage from the health insurance marketplace,” Gjersvig said.

The number of uninsured has crept up steadily for the past three years, after sharp drops after 2014 when the state expanded eligibility for coverage under the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state’s Medicaid system.

Currently, families earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level can qualify for Medicaid coverage in Arizona. The federal poverty threshold varies according to family size, but in 2019 it was set at $25,926 for a family of two parents and two children under 18 – so a family of four making about $35,000 would meet the 138% threshold.

Derksen said another factor behind the loss in insurance is the fact that U.S. health care remains “needlessly” complicated, with information so “fragmented” between different places that it requires navigators to help people understand the system.

That is not the case in other developed countries, which deliver health care at a much lower cost per capita, Derksen said. He pointed to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that said wasteful spending on fraud, abuse and administrative costs contribute to almost $1 trillion of the $4 trillion that is spent annually on health care in the U.S.

One resource Gjersvig recommends to people looking for insurance coverage is the Cover Arizona Coalition through Vitalyst, a coalition of resources throughout the state that helps people navigate the healthcare marketplace in Arizona.

He also touted two national grants that he said have helped his organization work with more than 180 locations across the state to have certified application counselors help consumers navigate the health insurance marketplace.

Arizona’s 11.3% uninsured rate last year tied with North Carolina for ninth-worst in the nation. Texas had the highest rate of uninsured residents, at 18.4%, while Massachusetts was lowest, with a 3% rate.

With a pandemic raging and an election nearing, health care remains one of the top priorities for many Americans, Derksen said. He encouraged voters to consider all health care options this fall.

“It doesn’t have to be a binary choice of Medicare-for-all vs. the private sector,” Derksen said. “Those aren’t the only two choices.”

Open enrollment for coverage through the federally facilitated ACA Marketplace starts Nov 1 and runs through Dec. 15.

A documentary on the Beatles trip to India, Jessica Chastain as a hired killer, and ghosts are ready to be watched via The Loft's weekly streaming films. For more info on what films to stream and how to stream them, click here.

While at the site, also check out the popular and ongoing Open Air Cinema series.

This week's films:

The Artist's Wife


The wife of a famous artist tries to contact his estranged family before his dementia worsens. Starring Oscar-nominees Lena Olin and Bruce Dern.


Meeting The Beatles In India


Filmmaker Paul Saltzman retraces his journey of 50 years ago when he spent a life-changing time with the Beatles at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram on the banks of the Ganges River.

PHOENIX – Recent polling data in the Arizona Senate race suggests Democrat Mark Kelly has a large lead over incumbent Republican Sen. Martha McSally. However, the gap might not be as big as some polls show.

A recent poll from Fox News has Kelly 17 points up in the Arizona Senate race. The poll, conducted at the end of August, surveyed 772 likely voters and found a 56-39 split in favor of Kelly.

However, data from OH Predictive Insights, a Phoenix-based polling firm, suggests the gap is much smaller. Data analyst Jacob Joss said that, while Kelly is undoubtedly ahead, the race is actually closer to single digits.

“I wasn’t necessarily surprised that it was a large gap,” Joss said of the Fox poll. “I was surprised that it was a 17-point gap.”

OH Predictive Insight’s latest poll shows Kelly with a 10-point margin. Its data did show a wider gap in the summer. However, the race narrowed to as small as 5 percentage points in August.

The Fox poll claims to have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points while the OH Predictive Insights survey of 600 likely voters from Sept. 8-10 has a margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

“It looks like Kelly is the clear favorite right now,” Joss said. “But obviously the numbers are close enough that either party could come out on top.”

The election might be decided by voter turnout. According to data compiled by Arizona Highground, a public affairs consulting firm, Arizona will likely surpass 3 million voters for the first time in the state’s history.

The firm’s data also showed record turnout in the 2020 primary elections. This included a 30% increase from the 2018 primary among registered Democrats, compared with just a 7 percent increase among registered Republicans.

Arizona Highground President Chuck Coughlin said younger voters that often lean to the left might be driving the shift in the Arizona electorate.

“Republicans always turn out,” Coughlin said. “The sun rises in the morning. Republicans go vote. It’s who shows up around them in the cycle. And we’ve seen higher participation rates amongst nontraditional cohorts of the electorate.”

Just four years ago, Republican Sen. John McCain won re-election to this seat by nearly 13 points over Democratic challenger Ann Kirkpatrick. After McCain died in 2018, McSally was appointed to fill his seat. The election this November is to fill the final two years of McCain’s term.

If Kelly wins, it would mark the first time in nearly 70 years that Arizona had two Democratic senators in office concurrently. And because the election is filling a vacant seat, Kelly could be sworn in as early as Nov. 30, when Arizona election results are certified, according to Arizona law.

This could allow the winner of the race to cast a crucial vote on a potential Supreme Court nomination by President Donald Trump. It could also be a deciding factor in who controls the Senate for the next two years.

“Whoever wins the Senate seat here, whether that be Mark Kelly or Martha McSally, is going to play a key role in determining who gets 51 seats in the Senate,” Joss said.

With 518 new cases reported today, the number of Arizona’s confirmed novel coronavirus cases topped 216,000 as of Friday, Sept. 25, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.

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Pima County had seen 25,265 of the state’s 216,367 confirmed cases.

With 28 new deaths today, a total of 5,587 Arizonans had died after contracting COVID-19, including 622 deaths in Pima County, according to the Sept. 24 report.

The number of hospitalized COVID cases continues to decline from July peaks, although it has ticked upward over the last week. ADHS reported that as of Sept. 24, 521 COVID patients were hospitalized in the state. The number of hospitalized COVID patients peaked at 3,517 on July 13.

A total of 721 people visited emergency rooms on Sept. 24 with COVID symptoms. That number peaked at 2,008 on July 7.

A total of 119 COVID-19 patients were in intensive care unit beds on Sept. 23. The number of COVID patients in ICUs peaked at 970 on July 13.

On a week-by-week basis in Pima County, the number of positive COVID tests peaked the week ending July 4 with 2,396 cases, according to a Sept. 17 report from the Pima County Health Department. While a vocal minority continues to insist that masks do no good, the spread of the virus began to decline within weeks of Pima County’s mask mandate, as more people began wearing them in public, although the level of new cases has creeped back up in recent weeks with the return of UA students. For the week ending Aug. 29, 507 new cases were reported; for the week ending Sept. 5, a total of 667 cases were reported; for the week ending Sept. 12, 584 cases were reported. (Recent weeks are subject to revision.)

Deaths in Pima County are down from a peak of 55 in the week ending July 4 to 19 for the week ending Aug. 15, 13 in the week ending Aug. 22, 10 in the week ending Aug. 29 and three in the week ending Sept. 5. (As above, these numbers are subject to revision as recent deaths may not have been reported.)