The state of Oregon is holding a health insurance lottery where 91,000 hopeful enrollees will be competing for a couple thousand spots under the Oregon Health Plan, the state's Medicaid program. OHP was created to cover those who made too much to enroll in traditional Medicaid but too little to afford market healthcare, and this development comes as a result of budget cuts and a subsequent enrollment closure in July of 2004. It's a far cry from the universal health care coverage that the plan was suppose to lead to, and marks a dramatic turn for the state's once-ambitious health care reforms.

(Previously in dystopic health care developments)
posted by Weebot on Mar 30, 2008 - 64 comments

Walk A Mile project brings policymakers and people on assistance together. One of their programs is Living on Food Stamps, where policymakers try to eat for a month on the same amount of food stamps regular people receive. Here's how it went in Oregon, and some lessons learned by legislators.
posted by amberglow on Dec 10, 2003 - 16 comments

Another embarrasment for Oregon. As if the government of my home state had not reached bottom, as far as actually acting in the interests of it's citizens, comes the news that the head of the State Senate Education Committee, State Senator Charles Starr, has written a letter urging his constituents to "run, don't walk" away from public schools. This from the "leader" in the state legislature for public education. This ranks with Tonya Harding and the anti-gay Oregon Citizen's alliance as another in the growing list of lowlights for Oregonians.
posted by Danf on Mar 7, 2003 - 32 comments

Gore takes Oregon. ...but may lose New Mexico. God, I'm going insane.
posted by bkdelong on Nov 10, 2000 - 5 comments

Sometimes there is a strange kind of justice in the universe. A candidate in Oregon, who had promised to require that all schools and libraries be forced to use censorware on their computers, changed his position when he found that his own campaign site was being censored by one of the most popular of the censorware packages.

Ah, schadenfreude. Hoist by his own petard, in't he?
posted by Steven Den Beste on Nov 9, 2000 - 1 comment

In Oregon, the turnout is expected to be 84% because everyone in Oregon votes by mail. I bet no other state comes anywhere close to that kind of turnout. This will definitely get the attention of other states; don't be surprised if others do it in two years.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Nov 7, 2000 - 11 comments