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| 8/2/2006 11:02:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article
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| The Eagle/Chad Larsen
Jan Bauer (left) and Pat Holliday listen to questions posed by OHSU medical student Sarah Traxler in Thursday's Rural Healthcare Dialogue Project. The group agreed that a universal healthcare initiative should not place the burden on taxpayers. |
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The Eagle/Chad Larsen
OHSU medical student Sarah Traxler listens to responses from a group of local residents at the Rural Healthcare Dialogue Project July 27. |
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Health care for all? Future doctors hope so
Med students assess rural opinions on universal health care
By Chad Larsen
Blue Mountain Eagle
CANYON CITY - Sarah Traxler is a third-year medical student at Oregon Health Sciences University pursuing the relatively unlucrative title of primary-care physician.
She's in John Day to complete the required rural rotation, a component that she says is "essential" to learning what the job is all about.
She's a wife, a mother, and an outspoken advocate for universal health care who, along with other members of her class who have taken that stance, is canvassing rural areas to gauge opinions outside of the Portland bubble, where universal health care enjoys virtually universal support.
So she's not in it for the money.
"We wanted to know how rural Oregon felt about universal health care," she says. "We thought it was naive to think that everybody in the state feels the same way they do in Portland."
Thursday, Traxler led a round-table discussion at the Employment Department office in Canyon City to pose some difficult questions to a number of local residents.
"Do you think health care should be universal?" Traxler asked the group.
"How do you define universal?" replied longtime Grant County resident Pat Holliday, whose daughter is also an OHSU student.
In discussion, a consensus would emerge: that all citizens, and only citizens, should have access to health care as long as taxpayers didn't have to foot the bill. People would have to become more accountable than they are now.
What's so universal about that?
The 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) made it illegal for emergency rooms to refuse care to any patient regardless of their ability to pay. Hospitals have swallowed the cost ever since, leaving Traxler to wonder: "What do we do with people whose only access to health care is through the ER, costing the system thousands and thousands when they could be treated much cheaper in a primary-care facility?"
The Oregon Health Plan (OHP) serves citizens who fall below a certain income level, but a substantial gray area exists between those who qualify for OHP and those who receive health benefits from their jobs.
As many as 600,000 Oregonians lack health insurance, Traxler says. The National Coalition on Health Care cites rising premiums as the primary reason why small businesses - employing 38 percent of the working population - can no longer afford to offer health benefits.
"I'm an employer and an employee, and I cannot offer health insurance to my employees." Holliday said. "Insurance companies have to be a part of this equation."
Through concepts like accountability, Holliday and the citizen's group emphasized that universal health care should be accomplished by private funding - getting health-care organizations to provide more robust care at affordable rates - rather than expanding OHP's coverage at the expense of taxpayers.
"If there is some kind of universal health care," Holliday said, "it should be contracted out to a private agency."
Traxler, whose five-week rotation ends next month, is open to alternate means: "The majority of people in Portland would be willing to pay for universal health care with their tax dollars. Here, they think you should be responsible for yourself and your family. Universal health care is everyone having access to care, whether you pay for it, or the government pays for it."
"You have to provide a baseline level of care for everybody," she says.
The HOPE (Healthcare Options Provided Efficiently) initiative, legislation that would amend the Oregon constitution to declare health care a fundamental right, failed to make the November ballot, according to the Associated Press.
Backed by independent gubernatorial candidate Ben Westlund, the campaign gathered 81,058 signatures, well short of the 100,840 needed to qualify.
"It would be kind of like EMTALA," Traxler said. "An unfunded state mandate is a little worrisome. Changing the constitution makes me squeamish."
Working as a social worker in Austin, Texas, the Louisiana native says she saw how critical the health care needs were among the underprivileged. She took on the dialogue project with other OHSU students after reform speeches on campus instilled her belief in universal care.
Information from the conference will be submitted to the office of private health partnerships, Medicaid advisory committee, and health-policy commission.
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