Universal Healthcare for Oregonians!

Healthcare has been a constant issue and effort in America for over one hundred years. The first national healthcare effort dates all the way back to 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt was president. Two reasons why national healthcare did not happen in America is because Congress would not let it pass and the American Medical Association thought of it as “socialized medicine.”¹ It’s very hard to get such things passed on a national level so working towards it on a state level is still some progress and a huge step. Here in Oregon at least ten Oregonians die every week because they cannot afford health insurance. At least one thousand Oregonians per month face bankruptcy issues that are caused by healthcare. The American private healthcare insurance system and or companies create higher administrative costs than any single payer health program in the United States, or any other universal healthcare insurance plan in the industrialized world. How much of Americans’ premiums go towards the administrative costs of private health insurance? About forty percent of our premiums from health insurance go towards the administrative costs of private health insurance.

            How much of the United States’ GDP goes towards healthcare costs? About 17.6 percent of the U.S. GDP is for healthcare costs. This is equivalent to $8,233 per year per person. We spend two and a half times more money on healthcare costs than most developed nations in the world! That’s a lot of money! Oregon House Bill 3260 is aimed at ensuring quality, patient centered, and affordable health care for all persons living or working in Oregon.² This bill is created to improve the public's health and to control the cost of health care for the benefit of individuals, families, businesses and society.³ If this House Bill is passed, the Oregon Health Authority would be required to conduct a study that compares at least four methods to finance healthcare and recommend the best financing method to finance healthcare here in Oregon. Options that are to be investigated are: Oregon’s current financing system for healthcare, the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the Oregon Health Insurance Exchange, adding a public option in the State Health Insurance Exchange that will allow consumers to choose a publicly funded option instead of choosing one of the policies that are apart of private insurance policies, add a publicly funded single payer program that is funded from employment, and one or more of the four methods that researchers agree is the best financing method to finance healthcare.

Literature Cited:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/27/us-health-care-reform-efforts-through-history/
www.oregonaction.org