EDITORIAL – Health care up to Lady Luck in Oregon

This week, more than 80,000 Oregonians will anxiously await the results of a lottery that… This week, more than 80,000 Oregonians will anxiously await the results of a lottery that could change their lives. No, this isn’t the Daily Number or the Powerball, and the prize isn’t of monetary value. The lottery in question will award a few lucky thousand Oregonians with state-funded health insurance, according to the Associated Press.

The health care plan is designed to cover people not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid but not financially able to buy their own insurance. Implemented in Oregon in the mid-’90s, the program reached its peak in 1995, covering more than 132,000 people, but budget cuts forced the state to close the program to newcomers in 2004. This week’s lottery will fill several thousand openings the program has received. The program covers the most basic health care services, medications, hospital and vision services and limited dental at little or no cost.

Because of its lottery format, the chosen recipients will be picked at random, a decision we applaud. All too often, people are rejected from health insurance coverage because they pose certain health risks. No willing insurance candidate should be rejected because he poses a health risk.

Logistically, the lottery format makes sense. There are only a few thousand openings in the program, too small a margin to limit eligibility to a certain income level across a state with millions of people. Income level also doesn’t always correspond to the urgency for care.

While we stand by Oregon and other states that have made the move to provide health care for their citizens – particularly when the federal government seems like it will never come to grips with the notion – somehow, this lottery system doesn’t seem like enough. The almost-comedic irony of this situation isn’t lost on us or, we suspect, on most people. Here’s a service that – whether you believe it’s a natural-born right or not – fulfills a person’s most basic needs. And the state is raffling it away like it’s the monthly jackpot.

Our nation has entered into a health care crisis, and this lottery is only one example of Americans’ desperation to receive health care coverage and our current government’s unwillingness to acknowledge health care as a priority. As Shirley Krueger, an Oregonian lottery ticket holder told the Associated Press, the lottery is “better than nothing.”

True. But is that the kind of standard we’d like to hold our governments to? Health care has become a key issue in the 2008 presidential elections, with both Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama, proposing plans that would institute universal health care. While we believe that every American should have health care, we worry whether these plans will get stuck in a partisan Congress, with members from both sides picking the plan apart until it barely resembles the original proposal.

Several states have been successful at implementing their own health care plans, similar to Oregon’s. Addressing health care on a state-by-state basis is certainly more efficient and could prove to be the best method for providing the millions of uninsured Americans with the health care they need.