Legislative update

Will economy be the catalyst for bold heath care action in Salem?

by Martin Taylor
Public Policy & Community Affairs Manager
Portland, Ore.

CareOregon remains hopeful that the current economic crisis is creating an opportunity for transformational thinking in the areas of health care reform and expanding access.

Calls for health care change have been raised and discarded since the creation of Medicaid in the 1960s. It is possible that our present circumstances as a nation and as a state will act as a catalyst for bold action.

In Salem, the Oregon legislature is considering HB 2009, which closely resembles the work of the Oregon Health Fund Board. Several key features include:

• Expanding access to 200,000 Oregonians who qualify for federal Medicaid matching funds (half of whom are children) by passing a provider tax.
• Creating an Oregon Health Authority to centralize how the state purchases and contracts for health services.
• Delivery System Reform, including deeper investments in work like CareOregon’s Primary Care Renewal, integrated health homes, community collaboratives and new payment methods.
• Cost Containment strategies intended to extract more than $1 billion of costs from the current health care system.

In this economy, the inescapable fact is that the Legislature must make cuts across every service area. Our members will lose services that are vital to their well-being. And there is a very high likelihood that even if the Medicaid population expands, the per-capita payment on the members will go down.

We will work hard to generate optimism while protecting the stability of CareOregon.