Albany

Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio will hold a town hall at the Junction City Hall on Tuesday, August 18th.

Should you attend, please speak up and ask the congressman a question. Here are some possible talking points from which you might formulate your question:

We support comprehensive health reform that would accomplish the following:

• Every U.S. resident will have access to a clearly defined set of essential health services.
• The Triple Aim will drive the design of the health care system, in that the health system demonstrates:
  • Improvement in the overall health of the defined population,
  • Reduced per-capita costs, and
  • Improvement in the individual patient experience in terms of clinical outcomes, patient safety and patient satisfaction.
• The business models within our health system must realign financial incentives to make them consistent with the Triple Aim. On example would be to look at eliminating fee-for-service billing, and instead pay providers to keep people healthy and out of the hospital.
• Prevention, health education, and wellness services will be provided and promoted.
• Disparities in access to an essential benefits package and subsequently health outcomes between people of different socioeconomic and demographic groups is not acceptable and therefore should be eliminated.
• The delivery system must be transformed to provide greater access to effective primary care and chronic disease management, while specialty care must be more effectively linked and integrated with primary care providers.
• Electronic Health Records should be developed and implemented to promote and support evidence based decisions and improved efficiency of health care delivery.
• We must include development of a competitive, publicly-funded insurance option that gives Americans affordable and fair choice in how their insurance is purchased.
• We must explicitly acknowledge that public resources are finite. Therefore, public funds must be focused on providing the services which will cause the greatest improvement in population health. Many people may be able to purchase services that are more than those that are provided as part of the essential benefit package available to all residents and they should be allowed to do so. This is true of Medicare where close to 80% of Medicare beneficiaries have some type of supplemental coverage on top of their traditional Medicare benefit. However, the core benefit must provide a sufficient floor of essential benefits so that buying additional services is not absolutely necessary in order to achieve consistent positive health outcomes.

January 15th "Sick Around the World"
Can the U.S. learn anything from other advanced capitalist democracies-United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland-about how to run a health care system?

January 22nd "Big Money/Big Pharma"
How Pharmaceutical Companies, aided by the medical profession, sell new diseases to a gullible public.

January 29th "¡Salud!"
¡Salud! looks at Cuba, a cash-strapped country with what the BBC calls "one of the world's best health systems."  From the shores of Africa to the Americas, !Salud! hits the road with some of the 28,000 Cuban health professionals serving in 68 countries, and explores the hearts and minds of international medical students studying medicine for free in Cuba.

Please join us for these free Thursday evening programs.

6:30pm  Refreshments
7:00pm Program                    

Lakeside Center of the Mennonite Village
2180 54th Ave. SE
(Between Clay and Davidson)
Albany, Oregon 97322

This is the last film in the series.

January 29th "¡Salud!"
¡Salud! looks at Cuba, a cash-strapped country with what the BBC calls "one of the world's best health systems."  From the shores of Africa to the Americas, !Salud! hits the road with some of the 28,000 Cuban health professionals serving in 68 countries, and explores the hearts and minds of international medical students studying medicine for free in Cuba.

Please join us for this free Thursday evening program.

6:30pm  Refreshments
7:00pm Program                    

Lakeside Center of the Mennonite Village
2180 54th Ave. SE
(Between Clay and Davidson)
Albany, Oregon 97322