Oregon’s Medicaid Experiment Represents A ‘Defining Moment’

Let’s put the “Health” back in Health Care! Oregon’s Governor John Kitzhaber, a Democrat and a former emergency room doctor, has convinced the federal government that he has a way to make Medicaid treatment better, and cheaper, by completely changing the way the sickest people in Oregon get health care, NPR’s All Things Considered reported back on May 30th.

Under the current system, hospitals and doctors don’t have a financial incentive to make people better. Quite the opposite: If a patient keeps coming back, they keep getting paid. But under the new system, the quicker a patient gets better, the more money the coordinated care organization can keep. Kitzhaber believes that over the next five years, Oregon will be able to save the feds every penny of the $2 billion the state’s been promised.

“We estimated that if every state Medicaid program in the country were to adopt this model, the net savings would be about $1.5 trillion over 10 years,” he said.

Oregon’s new system needs to show cuts to Medicaid spending by 2 percent next year, otherwise all this new money could very well dry up.