Surgical Strike

[November 1st, 2006] Diane Lund-Muzikant is 68, wears green nail polish and isn't afraid to annoy powerful figures. "A lot of people don't like me," Lund-Muzikant says.

For 16 years, the diminutive breast-cancer survivor edited Oregon Health News, an investigative trade journal that routinely highlighted top Oregon healthcare executives' salaries, pharmaceutical companies' lobbying and health insurers' profitability.

Now Lund-Muzikant says she's been fired because the board that runs the monthly newsletter wants to water down its hard-hitting mission.

Despite its relatively small circulation of about 1,100 copies, Oregon Health News had a powerful audience of lawmakers, policy wonks, healthcare providers and journalists who turned to the publication for scarce news about the industry. They now fear that without Lund-Muzikant at the helm, healthcare consumers are the real casualties.

"It will be a major loss in our state," says health-policy advocate Ellen Pinney.

Lund-Muzikant, who plans to sue her former employer, says the board—which includes hospital administrators, lobbyists and pharmaceutical representatives—recently forced her out so the umbrella group that runs the newsletter, the Oregon Health Forum, could make more money. The newsletter doesn't accept ads, so it depends largely on events hosted by the forum, which in turn depends on the subjects of the newsletter's articles.

"It's all about money and power, because that's what drives the healthcare industry," says Lund-Muzikant.

This tension is not a new phenomenon (see "Shooting the Messenger," WW, June 17, 1998), but Lund-Muzikant says the board finally reached a tipping point against her.

Board member Dick Stenson, president and CEO of Tuality Healthcare, says Lund-Muzikant wasn't fired."It was by mutual agreement," Stenson says, a conclusion Lund-Muzikant says is untrue. Meanwhile, associate editor Tim Stumm has been promoted to interim editor-in-chief.

A recent email from a member of the newsletter's advisory council, which is separate from the board of directors, hints at the most recent tension over Lund-Muzikant.

Writing about the publication's future in an email to colleagues last week, advisory council member Emily Katz says, "[T]hey hope to bring back a more fair and balanced look at the industry...the juicy bits that we all love will remain. They just did not want to be consumed with smear."

Katz, an administrator for the managed-care group CareOregon, now says the newsletter was always factual but struck her as unbalanced. However, she couldn't cite an example of a story to illustrate her concern.

This month, the last Oregon Health News that Lund-Muzikant edited had a front-page story about CareOregon. The story pointed out that the group, which serves Medicaid patients on the Oregon Health Plan, has increased its net income and pumped up its reserves, even as resources for the Oregon Health Plan have shriveled.

State Rep. Mitch Greenlick (D-Portland), a past member of the newsletter's board, is protesting Lund-Muzikant's departure by not renewing his $149 annual subscription. He's not the only legislator angered by Lund-Muzikant's fate. Adds Rep. Carolyn Tomei (D-Milwaukie), "It's like she's being punished for being a whistleblower."