By BENNETT HALL
Gazette-Times reporter
It’s the first affiliate in Oregonof the Physicians for a National Health Program
Local doctors are coming together to form the first Oregon affiliate of a national health care reform organization.
The Corvallis chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program was announced at a gathering of about 100 local health care advocates Thursday evening at Grace Lutheran Church.
“The reception was pretty good,” said Dr. Mike Huntington, a retired radiation oncologist and one of the chapter’s founding members. “I think we’ll have a pretty good momentum starting now.”
PNHP joins several like-minded organizations in Corvallis, which has emerged as an Oregon hotbed of the national health care reform movement, with an estimated 200 citizen activists pushing for change.
There are at least two homegrown outfits agitating for improvements in the system, Mid-Valley Health Care Advocates and the Interfaith Health Care Network. And Corvallis boasts local chapters of two statewide reform groups, the Archimedes Movement and Health Care for All Oregon.
Headquartered in Chicago, Physicians for a National Health Program was launched in 1987 to push for a universal health insurance plan in the United States. The group currently has about 15,000 members, many of them doctors, including about 260 in Oregon.
The organization has endorsed House Resolution 676, the Conyers-Kucinich U.S. National Health Insurance Act, which would provide government medical coverage for all Americans.
The Corvallis chapter arose out of a group of a dozen or so local doctors who have been meeting for about a year to discuss ways to improve the current system of health care delivery in this country, which they regard as deeply flawed.
That group called itself PASHION (for Physician Advocates for Sensible Healthcare in Oregon and the Nation), and Huntington was one of the core members, along with emergency room physician Paul Hochfeld, internist Cosimo Storniolo and others.
At its last meeting Dec. 5, the group voted to reorganize as a chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program and invite other Oregonians — both medical professionals and others — to join the cause.
Huntington said the chapter would be based in Corvallis for now but might move its base of operations elsewhere, depending on where the membership is concentrated.
“I think we’ll have quite a few people coming out to be members of this Oregon chapter,” Huntington said.
For now the fledgling PNHP chapter will follow PASHION’s practice of meeting at 7 a.m. on the first and third Wednesday of each month in the Ringo Conference Room at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center. Evening meetings will be scheduled later.
Huntington said the new chapter plans to speak to civic groups, hold public forums and find other ways to spread its message of support for national health coverage. Ultimately, it hopes to win the backing of state legislators.
Politicians “will follow a groundswell in general,” Huntington said, “and that’s what we want to create.”
Anyone interested in joining the Oregon chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program can contact Dr. Mike Huntington at 745-5635 or mchuntington@comcast.net.
Free documentary
The Darkside Cinema, 215 S.W. Fourth St., is hosting a free prerelease screening of “Our Ailing Health Care” at 7:30 p.m. Monday. The film, a work in progress by local emergency room physician Paul Hochfeld, features interviews with health care reform advocates such as former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and Dr. Marcia Angell, a past editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. A discussion will follow the showing as Hochfeld solicits suggestions for improving the documentary prior to release.
