guest opinion

Recent recessions have left indelible fragility, and now the COVID-19 emergency and looming budget impacts are siphoning more funding from behavioral health.

The commentator suggests electronic health record systems should be developed to facilitate quality initiatives.‎

OPINION – July 11, 2013 -- Last week the Obama administration noted that there would be a number of delays in the implementation of Obamacare. I am not sure why the administration thinks it can pick and choose when it would like to implement certain provisions of the law, but I will leave that to the legal scholars.

OPINION – September 19, 2012 -- When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was first passed into law (2010) and then when it was largely upheld by this year’s SCOTUS ruling, I was anxiously anticipating that the ACA would not just be providing for improved benefits—but, that it would also be providing at least a degree of some much needed financial relief, through its premium tax credit and cost-sharing subsidy provisions.

OPINION – September 12, 2012 -- During the last two years, I have become an avid supporter of ObamaCare. Due to several unforeseen health issues in our family I began taking a closer look at the Affordable Care Act. It had become very clear that the healthcare industry was not necessarily a good fit for everybody, especially for those who found themselves due to job changes between health insurance companies and coverage, or those with pre-existing conditions, or even worse those without any health insurance coverage at all.

OPINION -- April 25, 2012 -- Regence Blue Cross of Oregon has notified individual subscribers that beginning in October they no longer will be able to buy coverage with a deductible lower than $2,500. The new plan also slashes benefits and raises co-payments and co-insurance.You thought the Enron guys who joked about victimizing Grandma Millie were bad? To me, Regence Blue Cross of Oregon is even worse.

OPINION -- February 2, 2012 -- The Supreme Court is going to rule on the case of whether it is constitutional for biotech companies to be able to patent gene sequences. This will be a landmark patent case, since currently about 20 percent of the human genome is patented for various diseases. If the lower court is overturned, it means that a lot of companies that have spent a lot of money making sure they have exclusive rights to commercialization of treatments and testing for specific disease genes, could stand to lose big.