Newberg

Oregon 3rd District Congressman David Wu will hold a town hall at the police station in McMinnville on Monday, August 10th. 

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.
• 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.

The next Newberg Chapter meeting will be taking place on Wednesday, June 4th from 7pm - 8:30pm and will be hosted at the house of Moniquea Degan.

Agenda

• Viewing of John Kitzhaber's speech "The Greatest Generation"
• Update from Archimedes Outreach Coordinator Matt Webber
• Where Archimedes is heading
• How you can become involved

If you would like to attend or learn more - please call or email Matt at matt@wecandobetter.org or (503) 860-5854. Light snacks provided. Feel free to bring your own.

Our second Leadership Training will be held the first Saturday in April. Please RSVP using the sign-up link below (preferred, though you must be logged-in to use the sign-up feature) or by sending an email to matt@wecandobetter.org.

This training will focus on three things:

• our new structure and grassroots decision-making
• presenting our message to groups large and small (AKA the speaker's training)
• the upcoming membership meeting

We will also hope to introduce our new staff members.