SB 27 Archimedes

SB- 27 Oregon Better Health Act (Archimedes)

SB 27 ARCHIMEDES (Oregon Better Health Act)

Summary:

Creates Oregon Health Fund to pool state and federal expenditures for health care in Oregon and to finance treatment of defined set of essential health conditions for all Oregonians.

Continuously appropriates moneys in fund to Oregon Health Plan Board for purpose of providing health services to all Oregon residents. Creates Oregon Health Fund Board to manage Oregon Health Fund.

Requires board to establish certain subcommittees for specified purposes.

Restructures Health Services Commission and imposes new criteria for developing prioritized list of health conditions.

Requires Governor, within 90 days of passage of Act, to request congressional approval to redirect federal moneys into Oregon Health Fund, contingent upon development of implementation plan by Oregon Health Fund Board.

Requires Governor, upon approval of request, to submit implementation plan to next following regular session of Legislative Assembly for consideration.

It ensures that all Oregonians will have access to a “core benefit” of essential health services; It explicitly defines this core benefit through a transparent process which prioritizes health services based on their relative effectiveness in producing health; It seeks to realign financial incentives to ensure fair and reasonable payment to providers, value-based cost sharing for consumers, and the transition to a more efficient delivery system; and It squarely confronts the underlying federal structure which must be reconsidered and modified in light of the realities of today if we hope to control cost and create a system that is both fair and economically sustainable.

More?
The Oregon Better Health Act emerged from a remarkable eight-month process of citizen engagement involving physicians, nurses, hospital CEOs, insurance and health plan executives, employers, organized labor, senior citizens including representatives from AARP, and more than 3,500 individual consumers from across Oregon. According to proponents The Oregon Better Health Act provides a framework for true health-care reform that is sustainable and fiscally transparent and feasible. It was developed using a participative process that sought input from a diverse group of stakeholders and therefore presents a uniquely collaborative and principled approach to solving this serious problem. The Oregon Better Health Act is the product of the Archimedes Movement, a broad-based grassroots effort to create a shared vision of a new health-care system by challenging the underlying structure of our current system and offering an alternative with which to replace it.

4/16/2008 update
The leadership of the Senate Special Committee on Health Care Reform, in conjunction with their counterparts in the House announced that they had decided to merge the best elements of Senate Bill 27 and Senate Bill 329 together to produce a comprehensive proposal for healthcare reform for consideration by the 2007 legislative assembly. However, the merger fell through,

Although the amendments to SB 329 incorporated much of the principles developed by the Archimedes Movement, the body as a whole fails to reflect them. Thus, those sponsoring SB-27 have asked that all references to the “Oregon Better Heath Act” be removed from the merged bill.

Currently SB 27 – the Oregon Better Health Act – is still sitting in the Senate Special Committee on Health Care Reform.