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THE ASTORIAN • TuESdAy, dEcEmbER 28, 2021
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
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GUEST COLUMN
Nuggets for spicing your holiday chatter
A
s you gather ‘round the holiday
table, or seek to converse via
Zoom, where will your small
talk take you? Fear not, dear readers, for
I offer the following nuggets of news for
spicing your chatter.
Each tidbit is intriguing but doesn’t
merit a column on its own. The late
Oregon columnist Ron Blankenbaker
referred to such items as “pieces of
string too short to save.”
Without further ado,
and in no particular
order …
• When the Oregon
Employment Depart-
ment eventually rolls
out its new technol-
DICK
ogy, Oregonians will
HUGHES
know whom to thank, or
blame: Frances.
The IT project will handle unem-
ployment insurance and the future
paid family and medical leave insur-
ance program. The project is long from
completion. But last week officials
announced, “Exciting news! The name
of our new modernized system.” The
name they chose honors Frances Per-
kins, who was President Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s long-serving secretary of
labor.
• Mike Cully’s demise is one of the
strangest I can recall. The League of
Oregon Cities’ executive director got
into a Twitter fight – about tipping fast
food workers – with Beaverton Mayor
Lacey Beaty. Really.
Beaty filed a complaint with the
league about Cully’s inappropriate and
reportedly profane language. The league
board accepted Cully’s resignation last
week. By the way, Cully’s profile on
LinkedIn refers to his “Transformative
Leadership.”
• By next summer, Oregon will have
been under a COVID-19 state of emer-
gency for more than two years. Last
week, Gov. Kate Brown extended
her pandemic emergency declaration
through June 30.
• As of Thursday afternoon, 12 Dem-
ocrats and 11 Republicans had filed to
run for Oregon governor. Former New
York Times columnist Nick Kristof is
the latest, filing last week as a Dem-
ocrat. Kristof resides on the family
farm outside Yamhill. But as was first
reported by Oregon Public Broadcast-
ing, state election officials want more
information before determining whether
he meets the three-year residency
requirement.
Unity, Oregon, was on the U.S. Census Bureau’s list of holiday-sounding places.
The filings are for the May 17 pri-
mary election for the Republican and
Democratic parties. They do not include
independent candidates, such as former
state Sen. Betsy Johnson.
Now that Oregon courts have upheld
the congressional legislative redistrict-
ing maps, candidates can begin filing
on Jan. 1 to run for U.S. representa-
tive, state senator and state representa-
tive. Filing continues through March 8.
Unlike candidates for the U.S. House,
legislative candidates must live within
their district.
• What will the 60-member Ore-
gon House look like in 2023? Women
– 22 Democrats and 12 Republicans –
are in the majority. The newest mem-
ber is Rep. Jessica George, R-St. Paul,
who was sworn in this month to replace
former Rep. Bill Post, R-Keizer. He
resigned after moving to Nevada.
There could have been a 35th woman
in the House. The Marion County com-
missioners, all Republicans, selected
Salem City Councilor Chris Hoy over
three women applicants to finish the
term of former Rep. Brian Clem, D-Sa-
lem, who resigned. By law, an appointed
legislator must be from the same polit-
ical party as the person who left the
office.
Meanwhile, a number of House
members are forgoing reelection and
choosing to retire or seek higher office.
The most recent announcements include
Rep. Sheri Schouten, D-Beaverton, who
is retiring, and Rep. Raquel Moore-
Green, R-Salem, who is running for the
Senate.
Schouten’s story is unique. She met
her future husband, then-Washington
County Commissioner Dick Schouten,
on the campaign trail. Both were wid-
owed. During then-Rep. Malstrom’s first
term in 2017, he proposed to her on the
House floor. The next year, Gov. Brown
officiated at their wedding.
• The Legislature officially has two
new top managers. Interim Legisla-
tive Administrator Brett Hanes had
“interim” removed from his title. Leg-
islative Administration includes human
resources, facilities, finance, information
technology and visitor services. Amanda
Beitel was named legislative fiscal offi-
cer, leading the nonpartisan staff that
works on state budgets and analyzes the
fiscal impact of legislation.
• Legislators participated from all
over for Friday’s virtual meeting of the
Emergency Board, which appointed
Beitel. Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena,
called in from the Walla Walla Regional
Airport in Washington state. Rep. Rob
Nosse, D-Portland, was on video from
his car. (He said he wasn’t driving.)
The Club for Growth Foundation has
gathered statistics on individual legisla-
tors’ attendance. The average state sen-
ator in Oregon missed 7% of floor votes
during this year’s regular legislative ses-
sion, compared with 8% for state repre-
sentatives. A few lawmakers scored per-
fect attendance.
• Sen. Chris Gorsek, D-Troutdale,
said the Oregon Task Force on School
Safety will take a deep look into school
resource officers next year. Gorsek
opposes their unilateral removal from
schools. He is a task force member, a
former police officer and a longtime
instructor of criminal justice at Mount
Hood Community College.
• The new president of the Oregon
Farm Bureau comes from the state’s
most populous county, Multnomah.
Angi Bailey operates a Gresham nurs-
ery that specializes in Japanese maples.
Elected this month to a two-year term,
she has filled the presidential role since
last spring when Barb Iverson stepped
aside for health reasons.
• U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio recently
announced big money for Oregon from
the federal infrastructure bill – $662 mil-
lion for improving roads, highways and
bridges, and $42 million for airports.
U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici announced
$92 million from that same legislation
to fix and expand drinking water and
wastewater systems in Oregon.
• Thanks to successful petition drives,
voters in Douglas and Klamath counties
will consider May ballot measures that
would take small steps toward the pos-
sibility of eastern and southern Oregon
becoming part of Idaho.
• In its list of holiday-sounding
places, the U.S. Census Bureau includes
Unity, Oregon. The town in Baker
County has 40 residents. No mention is
made of unincorporated Christmas Val-
ley in Lake County. The Census Bureau
also says the U.S. has more bookstores
than either home-improvement centers
or department stores. Really.
dick Hughes has been covering the
Oregon political scene since 1976.
GUEST COLUMN
Give patients a choice on pain management
T
he terrible pain caused by the opi-
oid crisis has reached every com-
munity in our state — and our
country.
So many of us have heard from Orego-
nians whose loved ones died from an opi-
oid overdose after struggling with addic-
tion — all because they filled an opioid
prescription. And our nation’s overdose
death rate soared to record highs during
the coronavirus public health emergency.
Preliminary data
released by the fed-
eral Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Preven-
tion in August show that
fatal drug overdose in
2020 rose nearly 30%, to
a record-setting 93,331
JEFF
deaths. Opioids, includ-
MERKLEY
ing prescription pain med-
ication, caused a stagger-
ing three-quarters of those
deaths — a record 69,710
lives lost. Sadly, Oregon
has been hit hard with a
nearly 44% increase in
overdose deaths over the
past two years.
Putting a stop to this
DAVID
opioid crisis requires a
RUSSO
multifaceted response
with economic and social
dimensions. It also requires us to look at
the underlying policy and commercial fac-
tors that drove the epidemic to reach such
staggering heights of tragedy and despair.
Health care providers have taken steps
to try to reduce the contribution of pre-
scription drugs to the opioid epidemic.
According to the American Medical
Association, physicians and other health
care professionals’ use of state Prescrip-
tion Drug Monitoring Programs increased
64.4% and opioid prescriptions decreased
by 37.1% from 2014 to 2019. Yet, opi-
oid overdoses continue to be a problem,
largely driven by illicit forms of opioids.
Patrick Semansky/AP Photo
The NOPAIN Act would create an equal playing field that gives doctors and their patients
more autonomy when choosing between differing opioid or nonopioid treatments.
THIS LEGISLATION WOuLd AddRESS THE bARRIERS
WITHIN mEdIcARE REImbuRSEmENT POLIcIES
THAT dIScOuRAGE PROVIdERS FROm OFFERING
NONOPIOId PAIN mANAGEmENT ALTERNATIVES
TO PATIENTS uNdERGOING SuRGERy.
Health care providers need access to a
variety of options to manage their patients’
pain, but often administrative and financial
barriers get in the way of comprehensive,
multidisciplinary pain care and rehabilita-
tion programs.
In order to increase access to safe and
effective nonopioids across America’s
health care landscape, we are pushing for
passage of the bipartisan Non-Opioids Pre-
vent Addiction in the Nation (NOPAIN)
Act. This legislation would address the
barriers within Medicare reimbursement
policies that discourage providers from
offering nonopioid pain management alter-
natives to patients undergoing surgery.
Under the current system, Medicare
does not allow adequate reimbursement
for alternatives to opioids. Instead, the pro-
gram shoehorns almost all nonopioid pain
management treatments — drugs, devices
and biologics — used in outpatient sur-
gery into payment packages that don’t
allow for separate reimbursement for indi-
vidual treatments. As a result, providers
can either take the financial hit of prescrib-
ing the alternative pain management treat-
ments or be fully reimbursed when they
prescribe opioids — even if alternatives
would be more appropriate for the patient.
That’s why it is critical to pass the
NOPAIN Act.
By directing Medicare to allocate sep-
arate reimbursement for U.S. Food and
Drug Administration-approved pain man-
agement alternatives, we can ensure
patients undergoing a surgical procedure
have a choice when deciding which treat-
ment is best for them.
Importantly, this legislation would not
prohibit or stifle patient access to phy-
sician-prescribed opioids for chronic
or acute pain in any way. Instead, the
NOPAIN Act would create an equal play-
ing field that gives doctors and their
patients more autonomy when choos-
ing between differing opioid or nonopioid
treatments.
With so much pain and hardship
wrought by the opioid epidemic, Congress
must spearhead innovative policy reme-
dies that help address the structural causes
of the crisis. The NOPAIN Act is one such
remedy. By fixing Medicare’s reimburse-
ment policy to ensure patients across the
country have a choice between differing
pain management treatments, we can help
combat one of the major drivers of this
addiction epidemic.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Dem-
ocrat, is a cosponsor of the NOPAIN Act.
dr. david Russo is a physiatrist and pain
management specialist at columbia Pain
management, Pc, in Hood River and a
member of the Oregon medical Associa-
tion. This guest column is part of a collabo-
ration between EO media Group and Pam-
plin media Group.