In a Dec. 18, 2025, opinion piece in The Lund Report, the president and CEO of the Hospital Association of Oregon (HAO), Becky Hultberg, argues that Oregonians need to deregulate the health care system or hospital executives will continue to restrict access to care.
Ms. Hultberg blames the recent closure announcements from Asante and Vibra hospitals on declining reimbursements and “an avalanche of complex, costly federal and state regulations that have made Oregon one of the most difficult places in the country to provide care.”
The opinion piece conflates the actual act of providing care, something I do for a living, with the act of exploiting the health care system, something an elite class of executives do. We do need to simplify delivery of health care for direct care providers by removing the components that provide no value, like the commercial insurance industry.
Ms. Hultberg asserts a sustainable health care system requires more access to commercial insurance, which could not be more false. Oregonians need a universal health care system that has direct oversight and control to ensure our health care funds go to providing high quality care.
Vibra Healthcare CEO Michael Kerr attributed the closure of the hospital to “flat insurer reimbursements, rising operational costs and a surge in prior-authorization denials.” He left out the “avalanche” of regulations. The long-term acute care hospital did not collapse under regulatory burden, it just isn’t profitable enough to satisfy Vibra Healthcare’s owner, Brad Hollinger, whose hobbies include owning Formula 1 and Indy race care teams. It isn’t profitable enough not because Oregon has regulations, but because the commercial health insurance Ms. Hultberg espouses has created a “surge in prior authorization denials.”
The Asante CEO, Tim Gessel, claims Asante Ashland Community Hospital must close its inpatient and obstetrics departments because “this past year, Ashland Community Hospital lost millions of dollars” and parrots the HAO taking points by claiming the regulatory burden is too much. A review of the last five years of financial data on the Oregon Health Authority’s financial dashboard shows Ashland Community Hospital has been very profitable.
The financial disclosures demonstrate Asante netted nearly $45 million from 2021-2025 from the Ashland operation, with a net operating margin of $20 million for the same period. These numbers demonstrate the closure is following the disastrous consolidation trend seen across the nation, not the result of financial struggle or expensive regulatory burden.
If it were true that deregulation increased access to care, states with the fewest health care regulations would have abundant access to affordable, high-quality health care. This is not the case. Our neighbors in Idaho have some of the fewest health care regulations in the nation, and they rank last in physicians per 100,000 residents and are below the appropriate number of registered nurses needed to care for their communities.
Furthermore, Idaho has seen its access to maternity care plummet in the last few years, while regulations in Oregon have prevented the closure of some maternal health services in the state. In a recent Becker’s Hospital Review list of 23 hospital closures in 2025, well over half of the closures occurred in states with minimal health care regulations. HAO assertions that an “avalanche" of regulation threatens access to care is unsupported by evidence and untethered from reality: corporate consolidation, private equity, and lack of oversight are destroying access to health care in America and Oregon.
Oregon ranks a respectable 13th in the Commonwealth Funds 2025 Scorecard on State Health System Performance, which utilizes six different domains to create a comprehensive analysis. The states with the worst overall rankings have the fewest regulations and, relative to Oregon, are not saving money denying their citizens access to care. Our health care system is very imperfect and flawed because it is part of the broken national system, not because Oregon has health care regulations that protect workers and patients. Allowing the HAO an opportunity to amend regulations will result in Oregon rapidly joining the five worst performing states in the nation: Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and West Virginia.
Oregon spends close to the same amount per capita on health care as Germany and Switzerland, and spends more than Austria, France, Netherlands, Canada, Belgium, and Sweden. Unfortunately, while we are spending more than nations who provide universal access to care, 14.5% of Oregonians had to delay or avoid healthcare due to cost. If Oregonians leave health executives unregulated, we will quickly have more hospitals and health systems reducing access to care for communities while worsening working conditions for the workers who deliver care.
I have been an RN in Oregon for nearly 15 years. I have experienced the workplace disasters when executives hire consultants and implement the cuts they recommend. I have seen food, environmental, laboratory, and maintenance services outsourced to corporations so executives can “better align with our budgetary goals.” I have watched the HAO successfully lobby our legislature for taxpayer handouts session after session, even through the years of very healthy margins. In those years of 6, 7, or even 9% margins, I was told by the executives that we had to be lean and that numbers showing tens of millions in profits didn’t paint the whole picture. All of the cuts, consolidation, and outsourcing is never enough, the executives always keep coming back, looking for more ways to extract more from the workers and the patients we serve.
The HAO is, once again, threatening Oregonians with disaster if the legislature doesn’t fulfill the hospital and insurance executives legislative wish list. Based on the best available evidence, capitulating to the HAO demands for deregulation will bring disaster. It is time for Oregon to lead the nation and adopt a universal health care system that distributes Oregon’s abundant health care funds to the communities that generate those funds. Providing universal access to high quality care will ensure our financial resources are spent supporting the health of all Oregonians.
Matt Calzia is a direct care registered nurse practicing in Oregon. He is an active member of the Oregon Nurses Association and is the direct care co-chair of the Nurse Staffing Advisory Board
