Wednesday, september 25, 2019
LOCAL
HermIstOnHeraLd.COm • A3
Former Oregon governor believes new approach needed
By KATHY ANEY
STAFF WRITER
F
ormer Gov. John
Kitzhaber started his
keynote speech at
Thursday’s health care sum-
mit in Hermiston with a per-
sonal story.
He told of his early years
as a 27-year-old Roseburg
emergency room doctor
fresh out of medical school
and awed by the respon-
sibility of caring for peo-
ple who arrived at the hos-
pital injured, sick, confused
or frightened. Occasionally,
patients died.
“When I was unable to
save a life, I walked across
the hall to a small room
where people waited for
news of their loved ones,”
he said. “It seemed like a
long, lonely journey across
30 feet of tile floor.”
In those days, he treated
each individual patient with-
out regard to cost, view-
ing death as the enemy and
treating people as individu-
als. In 1978, he was elected
to the Oregon House of Rep-
resentatives where he was
forced to look at health care
from a different angle.
“I came face-to-face with
a fundamental contradic-
tion,” he said. “As a legis-
lator, I couldn’t ignore the
cost.”
Kitzhaber’s
keynote
speech this week came mid-
way through the 2019 East-
ern Oregon Coordinated
Care Organization Clinician
& Staff Summit at the East-
ern Oregon Trade and Event
Center. Clinicians, health
care administrators and pol-
icy makers sitting at white,
linen-covered tables listened
to Kitzhaber’s thoughts on
national and state health care
reform.
Kitzhaber
said
he
staff photo by Kathy aney
Former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber shares his thoughts about health care delivery in Oregon on Thursday at the EOCCO
Clinician & Staff Summit in Hermiston.
believes we are thinking
about health care all wrong
on the national level.
“For decades, we’ve been
asking the wrong question.
We’ve been asking about the
subsidies and who pays,” he
said. “Instead we should be
asking, ‘Why does health
care cost so much in the first
place?’”
He said price points in the
U.S. are higher than most
anywhere else in the world.
“Why?” he asked the group.
Kitzhaber ticked off sev-
eral reasons. Private equity
investors are buying up the
most profitable parts of the
system, driving up costs.
Insurance companies have
cut eligibility and lowered
reimbursement rates. The
national debt increases to
pay for hikes in Medicare
and Medicaid costs.
“The insured uninsured”
have $5,000 deductibles and
“don’t really have insurance
at all,” he quipped. “Cost
shifting is the way we avoid
confronting reality.”
One way out, he said, is
funding health care from
a specific pot of money
indexed to a sustainable
growth rate.
“That’s exactly what
we’re trying to do in Oregon
with the CCOs,” Kitzhaber
said.
In 2009, as a state senator,
Kitzhaber helped pioneer
the Oregon Health Plan. He
later helped birth the state’s
system of 15 coordinated
care organizations, locally
governed networks of health
care providers who deliver
care to the state’s most vul-
nerable residents. The idea is
to focus on prevention to get
people healthy, reduce vis-
its to expensive emergency
rooms and lower costs. The
EOCCO serves Umatilla,
Morrow and 10 other East-
ern Oregon counties.
During the first five years,
some CCOs performed bet-
ter than others, but the state
saved more than $1 billion.
There were bumps, too,
including the Cover Ore-
gon disaster, and the state’s
Affordable Care Act insur-
ance exchange website
designed by Oracle Corp.,
which failed spectacularly.
Kitzhaber is unhappy
with recent reforms to Ore-
gon health care, which he
Candidates begin filing for 2020 elections
Only one person has
filed for the May 2020
elections in Umatilla
County so far
By JESSICA POLLARD
STAFF WRITER
The 2020 elections may
be months away, but the
county filing period for can-
didates opened on Sept. 12.
So far, only one person
has filed for candidacy: Dan
Dorran of Hermiston filed
for Umatilla County com-
missioner position three.
Kim Lindell, Umatilla
County elections manager,
said that the 2020 elections
in the county are on the back
burner as her office gears up
for the special election that
is happening on Nov.5.
“I don’t want to have
a discussion that is louder
than the November elec-
tions,” said Dorran, who
is involved with two char-
ter measures that are on the
upcoming ballot.
Voters in November
will also have the chance
to weigh in on several
other matters, including the
Hermiston School District
bond measure and the for-
mation of the Milton-Free-
water ambulance district.
Open positions in the
county for the May 2020
primaries include county
commissioner position No.
3, Umatilla County dis-
trict attorney, and Umatilla
County sheriff.
Lindell said others have
called to inquire about the
commissioner position.
For Dorran, who has
previously served on sev-
eral local boards including
the Umatilla County Fair
Board, the position would
be an opportunity to pro-
vide a strong voice from
Umatilla County on matters
ranging in scope from local
scope to statewide.
He said that he hasn’t
begun work on his official
campaign yet.
“I think there are things
we take for granted in Uma-
tilla County. We are a logis-
tical and distribution hub,”
Dorran said. “Umatilla
County is sitting on a good
spot compared to a lot of
other rural counties.”
Dorran said that people
had expressed an interest
in him filing for candidacy
as early as the last county
commissioner election.
“I feel extremely hum-
bled that people asked me
to consider running. It’s
something that I’m passion-
ate about and look forward
to,” he said.
Lindell said Umatilla
County voters should keep
an eye on the county web-
site for updates on both
the November 2019 elec-
tion and the May 2020
primaries.
During the May 2018
primary elections, only
13,310 ballots were cast
from a pool of 42,511 reg-
istered voters in Uma-
tilla County. The numbers
improved to over half of the
registered voters later that
year during the November
elections.
brought to attention the
2017 restructure of the
Morrow County Sheriff’s
Office’s command staff as a
recent success in his career.
“Our restructure for
patrol, as well as for our
communications and civil
staff, has now allowed for
promotional opportunities
for advancement which will
allow for better retention of
our employees,” Matlack
stated on the site.
Matlack was elected to
the position in 2004. His
Facebook campaign page
states he wants to prioritize
financial responsibility and
the continuation of 24-hour
coverage.
The other open positions
for the upcoming Morrow
County elections include
Position 1 on the board
of county commission-
ers, which is currently held
by Jim Doherty; treasurer,
which is held by Gayle L.
Gutierrez; and the county
clerk position. Childers
said she filed for the clerk
position.
Childers said that Guti-
errez and Matlack were the
only other two people to
file for candidacy with the
county so far.
The deadline to file for
the May 2020 primaries is
March 10, 2020. If only two
people are filed for a posi-
tion, their election will go
straight to the November
2020 ballot.
“I just do it so I can
get it out of the way,” said
Childers. “But some peo-
ple wait until the filing
deadline.”
“We like to keep voters
apprised and active in vot-
ing,” she said. “Voting sort
of falls off of people’s radar
in Umatilla County.”
In Morrow County, only
one open position for the
2020 elections has two con-
tenders so far.
According to Mor-
row County Clerk Bobbi
Childers, current Mor-
row County Sheriff Ken-
neth Matlack has filed to
run for his position again.
Another candidate, Board-
man Police Department Sgt.
Mark Pratt, has announced
his bid for the position but
hasn’t yet registered with
the county.
Pratt said he used to
work for the Morrow
County Sheriff’s Office,
and that as sheriff, he would
hope to enhance the office’s
partnership with other
stakeholders.
“I would like to make
sure that the victims of
crimes are constantly kept
in touch with by the deputy
authorities,” Pratt said.
He mentioned he’d be
interested in adjusting the
different roles and respon-
sibilities at the sheriff’s
office.
Matlack, who is cur-
rently at a conference
regarding border security
and immigration in Wash-
ington, D.C., was not avail-
able to comment before
deadline.
Both candidates have
published campaign web-
sites and Facebook pages
regarding their candidacy.
Matlack’s
website
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541.567.2011
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Hermiston
called CCO 2.0. Last week,
he sent a letter to Gov. Kate
Brown, House Speaker Tina
Kotek and Senate President
Peter Courtney to weigh
in on two developments
he considers especially
worrisome.
He opposes new report-
ing requirements that will
force CCOs to hire more
personnel, increase costs
and “appeared to have been
copied and pasted from the
current insurance code.”
“I am concerned that
this increase in rules, reg-
ulations and reporting will
be particularly burden-
some on smaller rural CCOs
which have become import-
ant community assets,” he
wrote. The reforms, intended
to increase oversight, may
squelch the ability of locally
based CCOs to operate.
“These provisions and
others appear to retreat from
the community model based
on local control and a sense
of local ownership in favor
of a more punitive top-down
approach,” he wrote.
Kitzhaber also objects to
the state granting Trillium
Community Health, owned
by Fortune 500 company
Centene Corp., to contract
to administer the Oregon
Health Plan in Clackamas,
Multnomah and Washington
counties, in addition to Lane
County, which it already
administers.
The governor said Ore-
gon has much to lose if the
CCO model goes south,
including 30 years of collab-
oration and a chance to pio-
neer health care policy for
the country as a whole.
“If we lose this model,
we lose the opportunity to
steer the national debate,” he
said. “Right now, the model
is in question.”
Kitzhaber resigned in
2015 under a cloud as the
FBI investigated his fian-
cée and first lady, Cylvia
Hayes, for influence ped-
dling. He left office barely
a month into his fourth term
as governor. Still, Kitzhaber
remains a strong voice in the
world of health care reform
policy.
A health policy pub-
lication called “State of
Reform” recently quoted
Kitzhaber comparing him-
self to Don Quixote during
a private dinner in Washing-
ton, D.C., where he goes fre-
quently to talk about health
care reform.
“I think of these trips as
‘Don Quixote goes to Wash-
ington,’” he said. “Health
care reform is probably my
windmill.”
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Oct 7th-18th
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Call a local CASA
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