Our healthcare system is a fragile house of card and incremental reform is what’s needed. That’s the message delivered by a former legislator, Jim Thompson, to an Oregon Health Forum audience last week.
Thompson, who lost his House seat in 2014 to a right-wing conservative, Mike Nearman, after coming out in favor of gay marriage, is waging a comeback, having filed with the Independent Party for the November election.
A moderate Republican, Thompson said “The idea that we’ll have equal healthcare for all is an absurdity. We need to build a new system out of the ashes of the old system.”
Physicians are partially to blame for the healthcare dilemma, including those who refuse to accept Medicare patients, which is the case in Thompson’s district, Polk County, where residents must drive 40 miles to Silverton to find the nearest doctor who’ll see them.
Too many patients with cultural and linguistic issues Thompson said are treated disrespectfully and “made to feel they are inferior” when they interface with the healthcare system so they avoid care until they can wait no longer, ending up in ER where the care is the most expensive and sometimes too late.
Thompson also took issue with federal rules that don’t allow negotiations between insurers with drug manufacturers over prices, calling that the “dumbest” thing ever done.
In response to questions about a single-payer system, Thompson reminded the audience that voters are highly satisfied with their private healthcare option and distrust government run healthcare.
Single payer has become a synonym for socialism, he said, and the “politicization of health care will not produce results. We need access to reasonable healthcare for people who have nothing right now. Access is awful if you’re isolated and outside the system.”
“We need to expand community healthcare clinics,” he insisted and cannot train enough physicians to carry the load. Instead, allied professionals such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants should work under their direction.
The big healthcare cost drivers are hospitals and pharmaceutical costs, said Jeff Heatherington, CEO and president of FamiltyCare. Although Medicaid limits what hospitals can charge, no such limits exist for private insurers, who often fall prey to the demands of hospitals, particularly outside the Portland area where there’s a lack of competition.
Pharmaceutical companies and device makers face no limits at all. “The IUD went from $500 to $700 overnight because they could,” he said.
In December, Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, expects the release of a qualitative analysis being conducted by RAND Corporation to look at the feasibility of a single-payer healthcare system. Its findings will undoubtedly be discussed during the legislative session that gets underway next February.
“Whatever we do is not going to happen overnight,” said Dembrow, a long-time advocate of a single-payer system. In the shorter term, he’d like to see the two state-run health plans merge – the Public Employees’ Benefit Board (state employees) and the Oregon Educators Benefit Board (teachers and administrators), which, he said, could be the start of such a single payer system. Such a concept would need legislative approval.
Jan can be reached at [email protected].
