News Karen Kirsch isn't the only Oregonian pissed off by the way the state Insurance Division approves rate increases for individual health-care policies. Turns out she has at least one sympathetic ear in the Legislature. As we reported this week, Kirsch is challenging the Insurance Division's decision last July to let BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon raise its annual rates on about 88,000 individual ...   More

News [youtube t2yoOlicmww] After 19,000 miles and nearly five months on the road, the cast and crew of Darius Goes West joined about 65 people at the Hollywood Theatre on Saturday for one of two special screenings in Portland of the film. This impressive group of a dozen young men — including the documentary's title character, now-19-year-old Darius Weems — has high ambitions. They want to ...   More

News We've all felt like Renton in Trainspotting at some point. You know — that moment when you absolutely had to find a bathroom immediately. People with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease) feel like that often, maybe several times a day. According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms afflicting the 1 million-plus Americans with ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease include: diarrhea abdominal ...   More

News The ongoing battle to help struggling ratepayers by beefing up state oversight of the insurance industry is flaring up in Salem. The House Consumer Protection Committee held public hearings Wednesday on efforts to sharpen the teeth of the state Insurance Division. The division is charged with protecting individual ratepayers but has recently been accused of rolling over for Regence BlueCross ...   More

News Not all the news is glum these days. The 31st annual Shamrock Run this Sunday is experiencing an 18 percent jump this year in participants with more than 19,000 expected to attend. And race officials say the increase comes on top of last year's 45 percent jump. Run coordinator Steve Hamilton has been involved in the event since its beginning and attributes the “burst of growth” ...   More

News Yes, I know. It seems like every disease has a fund-raising walk or run. But some of those fund-raisers are more bittersweet than others, and a walk for multiple sclerosis is one of those. MS affects your nervous system, degrading the neurons so that any task requiring muscular coordination is all but impossible. Moreover, it most commonly affects the young, with almost twice the number of women as ...   More

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News U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden's plan to revamp America's ailing health care system (the Healthy Americans Act a.k.a. HAA) is the subject of an adoring piece today in The New Republic. Writer William Galston notes that the plan advanced by Oregon's senior Democratic senator and Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) has support from Republicans and Democrats. Beyond HAA's bipartisan support, Galston also finds much ...   More

News The caliber of public discussion about AIDS has greatly improved since 1988 when there were 863 people recorded as living with AIDS in Oregon. The Cascade AIDS Project was only five years old, and about to embark on an AIDS awareness ad campaign that was to appear on the side of TriMet vehicles, and in The Oregonian. TriMet lasted a few days before pulling the tame picture of two fully clothed ...   More

News As WW reported this week, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is taking some unaccustomed heat from the left — as in from unions that are typically allied with Wyden — for his health care proposal. And that makes this column today in The American Prospect by former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich a very interesting addition to the debate. Reich's liberal bona fides from his time in ...   More