Oregon adopts plan for universal health access

After months of debate, state lawmakers approved a bill calling for a strategy to cover all Oregonians.

By Doug Trapp, AMNews staff. Aug. 6, 2007.

Washington -- Oregon will offer health insurance to all uninsured residents by 2010 if the state can carry out a recently adopted plan and if voters approve a cigarette tax.

In late June, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed the Healthy Oregon Act, a 14-page road map for reforming the state's health care system and covering all of the state's roughly 615,000 uninsured residents -- about 17% of the population. The law calls for a health insurance pool for the uninsured and suggests an individual insurance mandate.

One of the measure's sponsors, Sen. Alan Bates, DO, compared the task at hand -- providing universal insurance access while improving health care quality and reducing costs -- to climbing Mount Everest. "We've just established base camp," said Dr. Bates, a family physician.

The measure creates the seven-member Oregon Health Fund Board to design a plan for the insurance pool and overall reforms. On July 9, Kulongoski appointed as the board's executive director Barney Speight, his deputy chief of staff and former deputy administrator for the Washington State Health Care Authority. The Oregon board will issue an interim report in February 2008 and final reform recommendations that October.

Democratic lawmakers also are asking voters to approve a constitutional amendment boosting the cigarette tax by 84.5 cents to provide health insurance for children up to age 19. The tax, part of Kulongoski's Healthy Kids Plan, would increase the cigarette levy to $2.025 and raise $152.7 million by 2009 to cover 117,000 uninsured kids. The vote split along party lines, so House Democrats didn't reach the 60% majority required for tax increase passage.