A panel of Oregon’s top health care legislators outlined their plans Wednesday for the upcoming session.
One of their main concerns is what to do if the Trump administration repeals the Affordable Care Act.
Democratic State Senator Elizabeth Steiner Hayward said it’s hard to know what to do until something happens. But she’s working on a range of bills.
“Whether that’s ensuring that contraception remains available without a copay. Or that people can be on insurance regardless of pre-existing conditions. Or that we may have an individual mandate in this state, the way that Massachusetts had, long before the ACA was passed,” she said.
Legislators are also considering sanctions against pill mills, clinics that over-prescribe opioids, and a prescription drug take-back program. With that, consumers would be able to put extra pills in an envelope and send them off to be incinerated, thus preventing kids from sneaking potentially dangerous drugs out of the family medicine cabinet.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers liked Congressman Greg Walden’s idea of ‘rebuilding and repairing’ the Affordable Care Act, as opposed to ‘repealing and replacing’ it.
Copyright 2017 Oregon Public Broadcasting
