I’m proud of OHSU and its principled leadership in our community during a fractious political period in our country that has direct impacts on OHSU. Specifically, I appreciate President Joe Robertson having articulated the institution’s opposition to the American Health Care Act.
It is a difficult thing for a public, non-partisan institution to do. But in this instance, OHSU had a role of community leadership and had no option but to share its concerns and point of view about the proposal.
Oregon, as a state, has done better at this project of health care reform than our federal government has. Hopefully some of our state’s expertise, and some of the expertise in this room, can wear off on Congress as this debate continues.
I know these are not normal times in the world of health care and science and we appreciate OHSU’s strong point of view.
Second, I want to express the board’s thanks to OHSU employees and leadership who are all stretching and working hard to help OHSU meet its financial goals.
The term “financial goals” makes this seem a bit bloodless and abstract. But it’s not. At OHSU, we know that meeting financial goals means keeping our promise to be good stewards of the public trust; it means being able to continue to invest in our research and education missions; and we know it translates into our ability to invest in providing the greatest care to the greatest number of Oregonians.
Maria Pope is OHSU board chairwoman, and senior vice president of power supply and operations and resource strategy at Portland General Electric.
"Oregon, as a state, has done better at this project of health care reform than our federal government has." How so?
Cover Oregon did not manage to sign up a single person and ended up relying on the Federal Exchange. Gov. Kitzhaber was also called out prior to his reelection by at least 2 state senators who had foreseen the CO debacle. On that basis alone, Oregon did not do better than the Federal system.
Maybe the state of Oregon did better than the federal system in certain other HC reform metrics, but if you pointed those out specifically, it would make more sense than what you stated here.
Dr. Lynn Fenton