The BBC on the Oregon Health Plan
The BBC NEWS site is running a story on Oregon's health care lottery.
At the Outside In community clinic in downtown Portland, doctors see 7,000 different patients a year, 90% of whom have no health insurance.
The clinic's director, John Duke, says the lottery provides hope for the few who are picked but is indicative of a wider problem.
"I think it says it's a pretty sad state of the health care system in Oregon and in the nation as a whole," he says.
....
The question of how to pay for medical treatment is increasingly a function of the country's wider economic worries and is an important campaign issue for presidential hopefuls.
Yet Oregon's Director of Human Services, Dr Bruce Goldberg, hopes national leaders will take note of his state's efforts but not copy them.
"I hope what they're working for is not a national lottery..." he says.
Read the rest. Discuss.
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March 31, 2008
Posted in in the news. |
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Mar 31, '08
I don't know how my blue friends feel, but I'm delighted to know that our hospitals & government (ie medical expenses & tax dollars expended) are hemorrhaging money oversuch worthy causes.
Mar 31, '08
Another example of why we as a nation have rendered the Pledge of Allegiance into an act of national hypocrisy: Ours is no longer a republic; it is a corporatocracy, in this area run by insurance and medical corporations. We are divided as much as or more than ever between Bush's "have mores," the "haves" and the "have nots." There is no liberty or justice for all when people are living in poverty and have no or inadequate health care coverage.
Obama's, Hillary's and Wyden's health plans are at best partial fixes to this problem.
Apr 1, '08
I was at a meeting with ex gov. Kitzhaber and he was talking about how the intention of the OHP was to offer healthcare to ALL uninsured Oregonians but only a very limited amount of coverage. Essentially you'd take the amount of money you have, divide it by the number of uninsured and provide what ever level of insurance you could to ALL of them. You might not have coverage for brain surgery, but if you get sick you could at least get in, find out what it is and get some medication. He was against the lottery idea. I think he was right on the money.
<h2>Jeff</h2>