The Oregon Health Plan was specifically designed to ration health care. It does so by listing treatments in order of importance as determined by Committee. The rankings ran from 1 to 680 in the 2007 list. If the state runs out of money after number 580, treatments 581 and forward are theoretically not supplied. (Never mind how one allocates this over a yearly budget--planners don't have to think about these things.)

To get a feel for the choices that Committees make, substance abuse treatment (medical and psychotherapy) is number 5, treatment of "tobacco dependence" is number 6, contraception management/sterilization is number 7, and intensive counseling for obesity is number 8. HIV treatment is line 15. Induced abortions are at line 41. Comfort care in terminal illness (define that) is line 71.

After all this we actually get to some things that medicine has traditionally done, things like treating burn patients at line 80, treating injury to internal organs at line 88 and hip fractures at line 89, treating severe head injuries at line 101, kidney transplants at line 111, multiple scherosis at line 268, various kinds of cancers in the upper 200s, and urinary tract infections at line 290.

Hey, they're from the government, and they're here to help.


The Committee has different ideas about medical care than most average people.

• posted by Linda Gorman
• June 23, 2008 @ 10:27 pm
• Permalink

This reminds me of a story I read earlier this year about Oregon:


http://tinyurl.com/4shklz

(The link is to OregonLive.com)

• posted by John LaPlante
• June 23, 2008 @ 2:43 pm
• Permalink

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