By BENNETT HALL
Gazette-Times business editor | Posted: Thursday, April 26, 2007 12:00 am
A veteran of many elections, former Gov. John Kitzhaber is a polished political campaigner. But these days, instead of campaigning for office, he's campaigning for health-care reform.
Specifically, he's promoting Senate Bill 27, a plan before the Oregon Legislature that would create a framework to examine how the state spends its allotment of federal Medicare and Medicaid dollars and look for ways to use the money more effectively.
On Wednesday Kitzhaber made a swing through the mid-valley to talk up the bill, also known as the Oregon Better Health Care Act, and rally his supporters.
In a fiery five-minute stump speech, Kitzhaber addressed about 70 people in the fellowship hall of Good Samaritan Episcopal Church in Corvallis. Many of them were wearing the "We Can Do Better" T-shirts of Kitzhaber's Archimedes Movement, which launched its statewide health-care reform campaign with a similar meeting in Corvallis last May.
"Changes to the Medicare system have to be made at the federal level," Kitzhaber acknowledged. "(But) we also believe that Oregonians have a legitimate role in that process."
SB27, Kitzhaber said, would enable Oregonians to examine the central causes of skyrocketing health-care costs and find ways to change the system to get a bigger bang for the health-care buck.
"It isn't in anybody's interest to turn our backs on the thousands of Oregonians and millions of Americans who don't have access to health care. It's in everybody's best interest to create a process in which which we ask: Can we do better?" he said.
"That's exactly what we're trying to do through the Oregon Better Health Act."
In a reference to the Oregon Health Plan he helped launch during his own stint in the Legislature, Kitzhaber reminded his audience that this state has its own way of doing things.
"We have a long history here in Oregon of innovative approaches to health care," he said.
In response to questions from the audience, Kitzhaber said one of the problems with the federal health insurance system is that it pays for tests and treatments that may be unnecessary yet won't pay for other services that patients might really need.
He argued the whole system would benefit from an analysis that realigns financial incentives in ways that reward effective approaches to health care while reducing costly tests and procedures that don't improve outcomes.
"We are going to have to give up something, but I think the things we give up are going to be things we probably don't want anyway," he said. "That's the conversation we can have here in Oregon that you just can't have in Washington, D.C."
After his morning talk in Corvallis, Kitzhaber was scheduled to go to Albany to address the Chamber of Commerce.
Kitzhaber's local appearance was sponsored by the local chapter of the Archimedes Movement, Mid-Valley Health Care Advocates and a coalition of nine Corvallis-area churches called the Interfaith Health Care Network.
Representatives of the local groups planned to go to Salem today to show support for the Oregon Better Health Care Act at a legislative work session.
Bennett Hall is the business editor for the Gazette-Times. He can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.