Health reform interrupted: the unraveling of the Oregon Health Plan

The Oregon Health Plan (OHP) has received national and international attention for rationing medical care based on explicit priorities. However, in recent years OHP has lost substantial enrollment and struggled to live up to its core principles. This paper explores what went wrong in OHP and the implications of Oregon's experience for state-led health reform.     

秦巴卫生项目干预效果评价:对产前保健利用的影响

目的:分析秦巴卫生项目(卫生Ⅷ项目B部分)对项目地区产前保健服务利用的影响,为促进中国农村贫困地区孕产期保健提供具有实效的思路和建议。方法:利用卫生Ⅷ项目终末家庭调查数据库,选取2002-2006年期间有过活产的妇女的相关信息,从产前检查时间和产前检查次数两方面分析干预措施对项目覆盖的四川、陕西和宁夏3省产前保健的作用效果。结果:产前检查不少于5次的比例受项目干预措施、民族、受教育程度、收入、生育史、年份、到达医疗机构所需时间的影响,干预乡孕妇相对于对照乡妇女接受不少于5次产前检查的OR值为1.85(P0.0001);孕早期检查率主要受产妇民族、受教育程度、收入和年份影响,是否项目乡并非孕早期检查率的显著影响因素。结论:秦巴卫生项目的实施促进了产前保健服务利用,但主要表现为产前检查次数的增加,干预措施对提高孕早期检查率,即提前产前检查时间无明显作用。秦巴地区妇女产前保健服务利用水平仍比较低,有待项目和配套政策的进一步支持。     

Immunization initiation among infants in the Oregon Health Plan

Infants who start receiving immunizations on time are more likely to be up to date at age 2 years. Among 39708 infants aged 3 months covered by the Oregon Health Plan (expanded Medicaid), those who did not have health care coverage within the first month of life were less likely to start receiving immunizations on time. Also at risk were infants in foster care, in subadoptive care, who were blind or disabled, who were Native American or Black, or whose mothers were not covered by the Oregon Health Plan.     

The Oregon Health Plan and public health

The Oregon Health Plan would provide all Oregonians with health insurance through a combination of Medicaid expansion, employer mandates and high-risk coverage, with services delivered largely through managed care. The role of public health in a managed care environment is an important national issue, and one which has received much attention in Oregon. "Cultural" differences between Medicaid and public health have arisen over issues such as whether eligibility assures access, whether the private medical model will provide integrated care, the potential for exploitation of vulnerable populations in a capitated system, and the loss of cost-based Medicaid reimbursement to public clinics. In 1991, legislation required that Oregon's Medicaid managed care plans enter agreements with local health departments to assure their continued participation in providing certain public health services; these agreements are now being implemented. Oregon's experience suggests that any national health system will require a continuum of community and individual health services, with an important role for public health departments.     

Integration and its discontents: substance abuse treatment in the Oregon Health Plan

With the creation of the Oregon Health Plan (OHP) in 1994, Oregon placed its Medicaid program under a managed care system. This paper examines the managed care practices of seven health plans serving OHP enrollees between 1996 and 1998. Results indicated that the original vision of integrating substance abuse treatment services with physical care for OHP enrollees evolved into a multilayered, carved-out approach. Factors working against integration included changes in the administration and management of the chemical dependency benefit, financial losses by health plans, and lack of training and incentives for physicians to refer clients to substance abuse treatment.     

Defining basic health benefits: lessons learned from the Oregon Health Plan

The Oregon Health Plan was instituted in 1994 with the goal of assuring basic health care for everyone in the state. The plan used an innovative public process to rank health services as its method of defining basic health care benefits. Due to its inability to constrain health care costs and an economic recession in the state, many of the plan's core elements are no longer operational. This essay outlines lessons learned from the Oregon Health plan's successes and failures and describes a new process of health reform that began in Oregon in 2007.     

Medical necessity and defined coverage benefits in the Oregon Health Plan.

The policy debate in Oregon has primarily focused on the Prioritized List of Services. However, little information is available on how defined coverage benefits and managed care affect the role of medical necessity in determining care for Medicaid patients. This issue is important because medical necessity determinations are currently used by many states to limit extraneous health care costs but require resource-intensive oversight, are open to wide variance, and frequently prompt litigation challenging interpretations of what is necessary and what is not. The qualitative study described here addressed whether medical necessity remains a salient and useful concept in the Oregon Health Plan. Our results indicate that defined coverage benefits, as described by the funded portion of the Prioritized List of Services, supplant medical necessity determinations for coverage, while managed care incentives limit the need for medical necessity determinations at the provider level. Clinical choices are, for the most part, guided by providers' judgment within the financial constraints of capitation and by targeted use management techniques. The combination of capitated care and Oregon's defined coverage benefits package has marginalized the use of medical necessity, albeit with consequences for state oversight of Medicaid services.     

Health care reform in the Russian Federation

This paper discusses the reasons for and the aims of a new model of health care under consideration in the Russian Federation. The concepts on which the reform is based and the mechanisms to transit from the existing centrally planned and financed health services into more decentralized services, funded in a competitive environment from multiple sources including health insurance, are discussed. The related draft legislation is complemented with viewpoints and opinions of the author.     

Health care utilization in the British National Health Service

Four national surveys of primary care services in England and Wales demonstrate that utilization rates have not continued to increase significantly since the initiation of the National Health Service in 1948, despite an initial surge in demands for medical services. The author examines morbidity surveys, consultation patterns, and referrals to secondary care and examines the ethical dilemma of basing services on costs.     

Health care reform in the United States

The need for change in the system of health care delivery in the United States has finally emerged as a political issue alongside continuing budget deficits, a growing national debt, declining educational outcomes, and decreased competitiveness of American business in the global economy. The two most pressing health care problems at the present time are rapidly increasing costs and lack of access to the system. A more distant but potentially more recalcitrant problem is the ageing of our population. This paper outlines and discusses some of the options for reform which are currently under consideration in the United States.