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Mar. 4th, 2008 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pearwaldorfOregon used to have a low-income health care plan, established by Governor John Kitzhaber, who was an MD by trade. It was not a perfect plan by any means (care rationing tends not to be a good thing), but it was better than no insurance at all. It was gutted by many things, including lack of funds, and new copay requirements. (I heard some statistic cited that said copays of little as $5 will turn people away from seeking care because they're so poor.) Enrollment has tapered off steadily, mostly due to people being dropped from its rolls, and OHP has been closed to new enrollment since 2004. Now, spots are opening up again. Oregon's solution? A lottery. Eighty thousand people are competing for a few thousand spots. This is so fucked-up it makes me want to cry.
It also doesn't help that Oregon has a very strange revenue structure--no sales tax, a constitutional mandate to refund any budget overages (the "kicker"), and anti-tax douchebags like Bill Sizemore (it would totally figure that he got a degree from Portland Bible College) that fight every step of the way to make sure there's no way to get more funding to things that need it because it would mean--oh noes!--tax hikes. It's a very sad situation, considering how liberal the state is. I hope they find some way to figure out a workable health care plan, because health care in the United States should not be predicated on a crap shoot.
It also doesn't help that Oregon has a very strange revenue structure--no sales tax, a constitutional mandate to refund any budget overages (the "kicker"), and anti-tax douchebags like Bill Sizemore (it would totally figure that he got a degree from Portland Bible College) that fight every step of the way to make sure there's no way to get more funding to things that need it because it would mean--oh noes!--tax hikes. It's a very sad situation, considering how liberal the state is. I hope they find some way to figure out a workable health care plan, because health care in the United States should not be predicated on a crap shoot.
