Welfare Programs Oregon

When a doctor told Tammi Howard last month that her son, Adam (Coby) Howard, qualified for a bone marrow transplant if she could come up with $100,000 in three weeks, she was "so happy," she said. "I hadn't been that happy since Coby got sick." Howard, 28, says she considered a transplant almost like the promise of a cure for her 7-year-old, who had been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in June, 1986, and who was then in remission.

A private firm hired by the state of Oregon to train welfare recipients distributed a tips sheet that recommended rooting through trash bins to save money. The state recalled the sheet after receiving complaints. The sheet was circulated at budgeting workshops for welfare recipients by employees of Lane Workforce Partnership, a Eugene company contracted by the state. Tips included shopping at thrift stores, clipping coupons and going to garage sales.

The Clinton Administration said Friday that it would permit Oregon to proceed with the nation's first-ever explicit attempt to ration medical services, launching a controversial program to cover every indigent person in Oregon but reducing the array of medical services available to them. The federal authorization means that Oregon will become the first state to provide a basic package of Medicaid services to all indigent men, women and children.

Oregon taxpayers should help pay for the doctor-assisted suicides of terminally ill poor people, the Health Services Commission decided Thursday. The panel voted, 10-1, that delivering lethal doses of prescription drugs should be included as a "medical service" for the 270,000 low-income residents covered under the state's health plan. The law, passed in 1994 and affirmed in 1996, allows doctors to prescribe lethal drugs at the request of patients who have less than six months to live.

Oregon's controversial plan to ration services in the state's Medicaid program was resubmitted Friday for federal approval by Democratic Gov. Barbara Roberts. Roberts said the plan has been altered to eliminate alleged bias against the disabled that was cited by Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan when he refused to approve the plan in August. The Oregon plan is the largest experiment in explicit rationing of medical services ever proposed in the United States.

Oregon taxpayers should help pay for the doctor-assisted suicides of terminally ill poor people, the Health Services Commission decided Thursday. The panel voted, 10-1, that delivering lethal doses of prescription drugs should be included as a "medical service" for the 270,000 low-income residents covered under the state's health plan. The law, passed in 1994 and affirmed in 1996, allows doctors to prescribe lethal drugs at the request of patients who have less than six months to live.

A private firm hired by the state of Oregon to train welfare recipients distributed a tips sheet that recommended rooting through trash bins to save money. The state recalled the sheet after receiving complaints. The sheet was circulated at budgeting workshops for welfare recipients by employees of Lane Workforce Partnership, a Eugene company contracted by the state. Tips included shopping at thrift stores, clipping coupons and going to garage sales.

The nation's first experiment in giving clean hypodermic needles to drug addicts is to begin next month in Portland, Ore., testing a controversial AIDS-control strategy that has proven too politically unpalatable to be tried anywhere else in the country. The needle exchange program, announced Thursday, is modeled on similar experiments abroad.

Oregon authorities have taken the first step toward sending some of the children of the Watts-based Ecclesia Athletic Assn. back to California, where they will live with their relatives. Officials at the Oregon Children's Services Division said Friday that they have initiated transfer proceedings for 10 of the 53 children, who were taken into protective custody Oct. 14 after the beating death of the 8-year-old daughter of Ecclesia founder Eldridge Broussard Jr.

Here is a scene from one of America's welfare laboratories. It is a borrowed college classroom where dozens of those who care for Oregon's poor--but have probably never met--are gathered for a kind of bureaucratic group therapy. Because of welfare reform, these social workers, state administrators, academics, community advocates and business philanthropists are undergoing an institutional identity crisis.

Here is a scene from one of America's welfare laboratories. It is a borrowed college classroom where dozens of those who care for Oregon's poor--but have probably never met--are gathered for a kind of bureaucratic group therapy. Because of welfare reform, these social workers, state administrators, academics, community advocates and business philanthropists are undergoing an institutional identity crisis.

A lumber mill on the picturesque shores of Oregon's Upper Klamath Lake is an unlikely battleground. But here, in a Klamath Falls company so powerful that some people say the town would die without it and so private that the front door is bereft of its name, is where the war over welfare reform in Oregon was fought and won. The company, JELD-WEN, manufactures wooden doors and windows.

The fax machine was a mystery to Elvira Herrera just six months ago. It was her first week at the Land Title Insurance & Escrow Corp., a downtown fixture in the little city of Ontario, Ore., and Herrera had never before sent a fax. It seemed so complicated, all those little buttons. Herrera kept putting the paper in the wrong way. The faxes came out blank. There was so much to conquer--tax assessors' maps, land deeds, property titles, all with their own baffling numerical codes.

The Clinton Administration said Friday that it would permit Oregon to proceed with the nation's first-ever explicit attempt to ration medical services, launching a controversial program to cover every indigent person in Oregon but reducing the array of medical services available to them. The federal authorization means that Oregon will become the first state to provide a basic package of Medicaid services to all indigent men, women and children.

Oregon's controversial plan to ration services in the state's Medicaid program was resubmitted Friday for federal approval by Democratic Gov. Barbara Roberts. Roberts said the plan has been altered to eliminate alleged bias against the disabled that was cited by Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan when he refused to approve the plan in August. The Oregon plan is the largest experiment in explicit rationing of medical services ever proposed in the United States.

Whose pain to ease? What sickness to treat? At how high a cost? For how long? And, yes: Whose sickness not to treat? What pain must be endured? In annual budget debates over dollars and cents, God-like health care questions like these seldom are raised.

Whose pain to ease? What sickness to treat? At how high a cost? For how long? And, yes: Whose sickness not to treat? What pain must be endured? In annual budget debates over dollars and cents, God-like health care questions like these seldom are raised.

A lumber mill on the picturesque shores of Oregon's Upper Klamath Lake is an unlikely battleground. But here, in a Klamath Falls company so powerful that some people say the town would die without it and so private that the front door is bereft of its name, is where the war over welfare reform in Oregon was fought and won. The company, JELD-WEN, manufactures wooden doors and windows.

Oregon authorities have taken the first step toward sending some of the children of the Watts-based Ecclesia Athletic Assn. back to California, where they will live with their relatives. Officials at the Oregon Children's Services Division said Friday that they have initiated transfer proceedings for 10 of the 53 children, who were taken into protective custody Oct. 14 after the beating death of the 8-year-old daughter of Ecclesia founder Eldridge Broussard Jr.

The nation's first experiment in giving clean hypodermic needles to drug addicts is to begin next month in Portland, Ore., testing a controversial AIDS-control strategy that has proven too politically unpalatable to be tried anywhere else in the country. The needle exchange program, announced Thursday, is modeled on similar experiments abroad.