The BulleTin • Friday, March 5, 2021 A5
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Legislature should
not let patient safety
program expire
J
essica Barnett died when she was 17. She had started fainting
when she was 12. It looked like a seizure. Her lips would
go blue. She was put on epilepsy medication. The fainting
didn’t stop.
Her grandmother read an arti-
cle about Long QT syndrome. The
Mayo Clinic defines it as “a heart
rhythm condition that can poten-
tially cause fast, chaotic heartbeats.
These rapid heartbeats might trigger
you to suddenly faint. Some people
with the condition have seizures. In
some severe cases, LQTS can cause
sudden death.” The family thought
that’s what Jessica could have. It is
treatable.
They had her tested. One test was
positive. Some at a different clinic
were ruled negative. Her doctors
didn’t believe that was what she had.
Jessica fainted again one day.
It was a bad episode. Paramedics
couldn’t revive her and she died.
Genetic testing after Jessica was
dead confirmed she had Long QT
syndrome. Her parents wanted an-
swers. They called the CEO of the
hospital to try an arrange a meeting
with her doctors. They were denied,
so they decided to sue.
Her parents gathered up her med-
ical records. Jessica’s mother dis-
covered the cardiologist never even
looked at one of the tests. It was only
sent to her general practitioner be-
cause that was the hospital’s practice.
Other test were apparently misread.
The family was tested. Her father
had it as well, though showed no
symptoms.
A lawsuit was settled out of court.
Another 18 months after the lawsuit
was settled and five years after Jessi-
ca’s death, the parents finally got to
meet with her doctors. They didn’t
know the family had requested to
meet with them. They had not been
told.
“The physicians jaws dropped
open. They were thinking: ‘If we’d
actually spoken to this family we
may not have had to go through liti-
gation,’” Jessica’s mother said. “They
were right. All we ever wanted was
to have our questions answered and
know they were making changes so
this wouldn’t happen again.”
The Oregon Patient Safety Com-
mission discussed this case and
cases like it. This case was from Can-
ada. All those details we provided
are courtesy of the efforts of the Ca-
nadian Patient Safety Institute and
Jessica’s family. Where it happened,
though, does not matter so much as
what can be learned from it.
Medical errors and mistakes
where patients are harmed are go-
ing to happen. Oregon actually has a
model that allows families to get an-
swers when medical errors occur —
outside of a courtroom.
Passed in 2013 by the Oregon
Legislature, the early discussion and
resolution system allows for an open
conversation between patients, fam-
ilies and medical providers when
serious harm occurs. It creates con-
fidentiality protections. Participants
can speak candidly and reconcili-
ation can be found without an ad-
versarial lawsuit. That can encour-
age that improvements are made in
patient safety. It can lower costs in
the medical system. And families
can get answers. Analysis of the pro-
gram’s performance is convincing.
You can find more about it at the
Oregon Patient Safety Commission’s
website.
But the program will go away
without action by the Legislature. It
is scheduled to sunset on Dec. 23,
2023. Senate Bill 110 introduced at
the request of Gov. Kate Brown and
the Oregon Patient Safety Commis-
sion would get rid of the sunset pro-
vision. It was state Sen. Tim Knopp,
R-Bend, who moved the bill be sent
to the Senate floor for a vote with
a recommendation that it pass. It
should.
Will you weigh in on taxes,
fees proposed for Bend?
W
hen the city of Bend starts
talking new fees and
taxes, our ears perk up.
On Wednesday night, the Bend City
Council had a preliminary discus-
sion about new fees and taxes.
The easy thing to do would be to
reflexively tell them: “No.” But even
with the $190 million transportation
bond graciously approved by Bend
voters, Bend has future needs for
roads and alternative transportation.
One other issue discussed Wednes-
day was finding a way to increase
public safety with more people for
Bend Fire & Rescue.
Some of the options discussed in-
cluded an increase on the existing
fire levy when it comes up for re-
newal. Another idea that has been
on the table is a transportation util-
ity fee.
It could be charged to all house-
holds and businesses in the city. The
Bend City Council could assess that
without approval from voters.
The discussion Wednesday night
didn’t get into a lot of detail. That
will likely come later this year. The
city will have meetings that are open
to the public about these proposed
taxes and fees. Whether or not you
participate or follow along is up to
you.
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
The whole web pays for Google
and Facebook to free services
G
BY ALEX WEBB
Bloomberg
oogle and Facebook make a lot
of noise about how their main
services are free to use. And
it’s true, they are. But what they don’t
highlight is their role in making al-
most everything else we consume on-
line more expensive.
Consider all the paywalls and paid
services that are rolling out across the
internet. News, films, music and even
theatrical streaming are now avail-
able for a subscription fee. The latest
example is Twitter, which announced
last week that it plans a paid product,
dubbed “Super Follows,” where users
can charge followers for “premium”
tweets and other content. The move is
a way for the company to decrease its
dependence on advertising revenue
— a pot of money that’s increasingly
being swallowed up by just Google
and Facebook.
If online power, and the ad revenue
that comes with it, continues to con-
centrate within those two platforms,
expect what you watch, read or listen
to elsewhere on the web to start cost-
ing you money.
Before the internet, advertising sub-
sidized all the media we consumed,
from TV and radio to magazines
and newspapers. This ad-supported
model made its way to the web and
conditioned us to expect online con-
tent to be free. News organizations,
for example, didn’t charge readers, in
the misguided hope that more eye-
balls on their stories would bring in
more revenue from the banner ads
they displayed.
In the past decade, however, that
ad money has gone overwhelmingly
to the search and social media gi-
ants. Last year, Google and Facebook
hoovered up 74% of the $300 billion
spent globally to advertise on the web,
according to the World Advertising
Research Council. That’s left every-
one else who had been reliant on ads
scrambling to make ends meet.
Adertising was always more lucra-
tive than simply selling to consumers.
Back in 2006, the New York Times
charged readers an average of $534
for a subscription, while it brought in
a further $1,064 per subscriber from
ads. Papers rarely had to increase their
newsstand prices because they were
able to eke out more money from ad-
vertisers instead, often well ahead of
the pace of inflation.
Now that privilege is reserved for
the tech giants. Since 2017, Facebook
has almost doubled its average reve-
nue per user in the U.S. and Canada
to $159 a year, by serving up more ads
and increasing prices when it needs
to. Analysts expect Facebook’s total
revenue to more than double again to
$176 billion by 2024.
From a consumer perspective, you
could argue that search and social
networking should be free — after all,
they are utilities that practically every-
one uses — while more specific ser-
vices should have a price tag. Twitter’s
Super Follows and Substack, which
offers subscriptions to individual writ-
ers’ newsletters, lets you pay for what
you want: Where one person might be
willing to spend on someone’s tweets
about currency trading, another could
choose to pay for a newsletter dedi-
cated to gluten-free cooking.
This system might be more effi-
cient, since you are theoretically only
paying for the media you want, but
that doesn’t mean it will be cheaper
for consumers. The rise of vid-
eo-on-demand services like Net-
flix and Disney+ has demonstrated
as much. As my colleague Tara
Lachapelle has pointed out, people
who cut the cord on traditional cable
packages have learned that the new
normal of multiple subscriptions isn’t
necessarily any cheaper than the old
world.
Yes, you get better, more convenient
and largely ad-free viewing — but
there’s a good chance you’re paying
more for it. The same applies to Twitter
and Substack, where signing up to just
four writers’ output at $5 a month each
is already more than the cost of a $17
New York Times subscription, which
gives you a greater breadth of coverage.
Super Follows are only likely to
be a small part of Twitter’s business,
at least at first. But taken in concert
with the rise of paywalls, subscription
streaming and video-on-demand, the
fact that even a new-ish media com-
pany like Twitter needs to add a paid
layer points to a world where every-
thing aside from Google and Face-
book has a cost of entry.
That might not be a bad thing, but
we should recognize the trade we’ve
made from ad-subsidized media to
ad-subsidized search and social net-
working.
Perhaps now, we can forge a better
understanding of the value of con-
tent. It costs money to produce, so it
should also cost money to consume.
e e
Alex Webb is a columnist for Bloomberg.
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Give Oregonians a future they can look forward to
U
BY KEVIN FRAZIER
rban Oregonians are nearly
twice as likely than rural resi-
dents to say Oregon is headed
in the right direction (41% vs. 22%),
according to a recent survey by the
Oregon Values and Belief Center.
That’s a difference that should grab
headlines, seize our attention and
steer our policy.
We need a statewide vision that in-
spires urban and rural Oregonians
alike to see a better future for them-
selves, their community and the state
as a whole.
How you see your future is how
you act in the present. When you’re
optimistic, you make long-term in-
vestments, you make long-term plans
and you try to improve on the efforts
and initiatives that are in place. These
are all the sorts of activities that make
a strong community even stronger.
They result in folks going back to
school, launching small businesses
and getting involved in their commu-
nity.
When you’re pessimistic, you’re not
looking forward to tomorrow. In fact,
you’re likely to be more anxious and
stressed, tired and sick. Pessimism
is unhealthy. I think we can all agree
that we would rather avoid the sort of
gloom associated with thinking that
the best days have come and gone.
It’s not surprising that rural Ore-
gonians feel less than cheery about
the future of Oregon. On the econ-
omy, 51% of rural Oregonians think
economic conditions in the state are
getting worse, compared to just 43%
of their urban counterparts. What’s
more, 25% of rural Oregonians are
very worried about their personal fi-
GUEST COLUMN
nances, whereas just
20% of urban resi-
dents feel the same.
A simple goal for
all statewide lead-
ers, then, should be
to give Oregonians
Frazier
a future to look for-
ward to.
What investments from Salem are
going to lead to better tomorrows in
Adel and Astoria? What new pro-
grams are going to lift up families in
Baker City and Bandon? What regu-
lations will be removed or restored to
uplift small businesses in Condon and
Coos Bay?
A detailed vision that specificity
calls out how Oregonians across the
123RF
Buildings dot Portland’s skyline.
state will realize a better tomorrow is
what our state deserves and needs. It’s
no secret that “moonshots” can com-
pel people into action and spark inno-
vation. If Oregonians see a tomorrow
worth fighting for, then they’ll sacri-
fice today.
e e
Kevin Frazier was raised in Washington County,
Oregon. He is pursuing a law degree at the
University of California, Berkeley School of Law.