Rep. Mitch Greenlick

Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, rolled out his coordinated care organization reform bill on Monday with the support of House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland. Greenlick intends to build on the success of locally driven reforms to the state Medicaid program by requiring CCOs to be more transparent and more accountable while protecting the public investment in the health of the state’s children, low-income adults and disabled people.

A group of four Democrats and one Republican discussed their policy ideas in Portland on Wednesday, but aside from a few modest proposals for the upcoming February session, goals from single-payer to improved consumer product safety and better Medicaid regulations may wait until 2017 and beyond.

The fallout from the Cover Oregon debacle will not be limited to the failed online insurance exchange and could have major repercussions throughout Oregon’s health system and the coordinated care organization reform efforts, largely due to the loss of longtime public servant Dr. Bruce Goldberg. Last week, Gov. John Kitzhaber announced Goldberg’s resignation -- the health policy leader took responsibility for his role in the state’s failure to effectively manage lackluster web developer Oracle. While Goldberg headed up the Oregon Health Authority, the California technology giant sent Oregon a large infrastructure of bad codes rather than the functioning Amazon.com-style website it had promised, leaving Oregon as the only state where consumers cannot sign up for private health insurance online without assistance.

Cover Oregon kicked The Lund Report out of a meeting with top legislators at its Durham headquarters Tuesday, and barred two Statesman-Journal reporters at the door from entering the office. The reporter from The Lund Report was escorted out of the office by Cover Oregon marketing director Amy Fauver and spokeswoman Ariane Holm, and was told it was a private meeting.

The amendment that would restrict pharmacists from dispensing generic insulin slipped out of the Capitol in the same way it appeared -- quietly, in an irregular committee at an odd hour. The Joint Capital Construction budget subcommittee voted to delete the amendment from House Bill 4110 at its 7:45 p.m. meeting on Wednesday. The full Ways & Means Committee approved HB 4110 without the amendment at its 8 p.m. meeting on Thursday.

Rep. Brian Clem, D-Salem, has put forward a compromise that will clear the way for local municipalities to bar medical marijuana dispensaries from their domains for a year while they prepare to develop policies to regulate incoming outlets. The dispensaries gained state sanctioning last year through House Bill 3460.

The Senate voted Tuesday to make it easier for small businesses to provide self-insured health coverage for their employees, eliminating a barrier that kept those employers from buying stop-loss coverage.

The House Health Committee debated Democratic plans to salvage the Cover Oregon insurance exchange yesterday, hearing several items that would require approval from the federal government to help Oregonians benefit from Obamacare who have been frustrated by the catastrophic rollout of the insurance exchange.