Word: oregon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Angeles County, where some 22,000 prisoners are shoehorned into facilities built for 13,000, more than 100,000 prisoners have been freed in the past year before completing their terms. In Oregon, whose prisons are bulging with 5,000 convicts jammed into cells designed for 3,000, one inmate is released for each new one taken in. At Chicago's Cook County jail, many prisoners bed down on floors and in hallways. Says William Currie, spokesman for the Cook County sheriff's department: "The whole criminal-justice system is like sausage in a sausage machine. Somehow everything's gotten...
Daniel Callahan, director of the Hastings Center, which specializes in the study of bioethical issues, approves the pioneering steps being taken by Oregon and Alameda. Trying to contain medical costs by greater efficiencies is "wishful thinking" in his view. One reason is the inexorable aging of America, as the nation's over-65 population rises from about 28 million today to a projected 35 million by the year 2000. Callahan also blames high-tech research for producing ingenious new operations that remain astronomically pricey even as they become popular and desirable. He proposes a slowdown on developing gimmicky procedures like...
...response, Dr. David Rothman of New York City's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center notes, "This is not a country that has ever turned its back on new technology." On the broader issue of rationing, many opponents argue that the new Oregon and Alameda County regulations are inherently unfair, since the limits on health-care protection apply only to the poor, particularly the young. Dr. Sam Flint, a director of the American Academy of Pediatrics, notes that children account for roughly 50% of the Medicaid population but receive only about one-fifth of health-care dollars. Meanwhile, the elderly get about...
...Oregon lawmaker opposed to the bill is Democrat Tom Mason. "You can't approach medicine merely as the greatest good for the greatest number of people," he says. "If we do that, why should anyone take care of you after a horrendous traffic accident?" A fair question, since it points to the medical reality that what is merely an option for one individual can be a life-or- death matter for another. Still, until the U.S. is ready for the huge fiscal sacrifices that would make complete medical care available to all, some form of rationing -- with rules clearly established...
With shrinking budgets and a growing load of uninsured patients, Oregon and California's Alameda County are setting priorities on what services they will...