Phil Barnhart
State Representative
Central Lane and Linn Counties
I woke up early on a Saturday morning last March in excruciating pain. My wife called an ambulance and minutes later I was in the hospital emergency room. By 6 a.m. the emergency room physician had diagnosed my problem as acute appendicitis, by noon the surgeon had it out, and five days later I was recovering at home.
I had health insurance that paid most of the cost, but I would have received exactly the same treatment if I had been completely uninsured. Under federal law, hospitals must treat all comers whether they are insured or not. People without health coverage go to their hospital emergency rooms for treatment knowing they will not be turned away.
Who pays? Hospital rates go up to cover non-collectibles. The costs shift to employers and those who buy their own health insurance. Lately, the cost shift has been about twenty cents of each premium dollar and will be much more if Measure 30 fails.
The Oregon Health Plan (OHP) is based on the idea that medical care should be done in the manner most likely to work at the lowest possible cost.
People, who otherwise would go to emergency rooms for very expensive treatment, are given preventive and lower cost treatment by physicians, or in specialized programs that cost even less. If providing a medication on a regular basis will reduce expensive hospital services and improve health, OHP pays for it.
If Measure 30 fails at the polls, over $200 million will be cut from the Department of Human services, mostly from the OHP, eliminating coverage for over 6,300 Lane and Linn County residents while ending prescription drug coverage for another 42,000. For every dollar Oregon spends on health care for the poor, the federal government pays $1.71. These federal taxes will be spent somewhere else and will not help boost the Oregon economy as they do now.
If Measure 30 fails, nearly all the small, low cost programs that treat the chronically mentally ill or disabled and treatment for drug and alcohol addiction will end or be rendered ineffective. People who currently live quietly in our communities will be “treated” in jail after becoming disruptive, or in much more expensive hospital settings. These low cost programs have reduced crime and helped families cope.
None of us can be a contributor to our economy if we are sick. Many of the poor are poor because they have a chronic condition requiring treatment. We can treat them a non-systematic “emergency room” plan, or we can do it better, intentionally, at lower cost.
That night last March, I was not thinking about insurance. I was in pain. A sick person will do whatever he can to seek treatment whether he has insurance or not. We can spend our tax dollars intentionally to provide low cost and effective treatments in OHP with the help of the federal taxes we pay, or we can expensively go it alone and pay, anyway, through higher health insurance premiums. Its a choice between paying less and getting more or paying more and getting less.
Rep. Phil Barnhart, PO Box 71188 Eugene, OR 97401, 541-484-9701
See http://www.philbarnhart.com for links to more information about the budget and Measure 30.