Thanks to your efforts and the efforts of Oregonians across the state, the Oregon house approved House Bills 2009 and 2116 on Monday. Yesterday, the Senate gave the bills the green light and sent them to Governor Kulongoski's desk where they are all but assured to be signed into law.

The two bills, which are designed to work in tandem, will soon begin to provide health coverage to more of Oregon's vulnerable citizens while simultaneously undertaking an ambitious agenda to improve health care delivery and reduce medical inflation.

House Bill 2009 contains a number of sequenced health reform steps aimed at reducing the growing cost of health care and bringing more efficiency and transparency to the system.  Some reforms included in the bill are steps to streamline state health care agencies into one Oregon Health Authority, governed by a citizen-led Health Policy Board; simplify and standardize the transactions between medical providers and insurance carriers; and require the collection of all medical claims data to give consumers tools to compare the cost and quality of their health care.

House Bill 2116 will leverage nearly $2 billion over the next four years to help the state provide health insurance for 200,000 Oregonians through the Oregon Health Plan (OHP) and a new shared-cost insurance product called "Kids Connect".  80,000 of those newly insured will be children under the age of 19 and the remaining will include an expansion of 35,000 low income adults to the OHP Standard program and an estimated  88,000 additional low income and disabled individuals expected in the OHP Plus program, which is federally mandated.

This is an important and meaningful step toward fixing our broken health care system and OHS owes a debt of gratitude to all our activists who attended meetings, made calls, wrote letters and emails, and shared their stories in testimony and with the media.  You restored Oregon as a national leader in health care reform.

However, making health care work for all Oregonians will take continued effort and time.  The passage of HB 2116 and 2009, while hugely significant, represents not an ending, but the end of the beginning.