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For many months, unresolved negotiations between a major Oregon health insurer and the state’s flagship medical center threatened to restrict health care access for hundreds of thousands of people.
On Thursday, that conflict appeared to have been basically resolved. Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oregon and Oregon Health & Science University announced a deal that would allow the majority—though not all—of Regence’s members in the state to continue to receive in-network care at OHSU into 2027.
Under the “multiyear” deal—the parties declined to offer specifics on the duration—all Regence members can keep getting in-network care at OHSU through the end of 2026.
But in 2027, OHSU will become harder and less affordable to access for a portion of Regence members.
OHSU will remain in-network for Regence’s employer-sponsored plans, among others which collectively represent the bulk of the insurance company’s membership in the state. (As of early this year, according to the state, well over 200,000 people were enrolled in the insurer’s commercial plans.)
But OHSU will no longer be in-network for others in the Regence clan. This includes those on Regence’s Medicare Advantage plan, who numbered nearly 43,000 in Oregon, according to the state data. Also booted from OHSU in-network status will be members of Regence individual plans, who numbered nearly 28,000 as of early this year.
(The insurer’s membership is not entirely clear. It reported 951,094 “people served” in 2025, but state data indicates its actual enrollment in the state, including the self-funded plans it manages, is considerably smaller. Still, Regence ranks with Kaiser among the state’s largest commercial health insurers.)
All of this make-your-eyes-glaze-over health insurance industry nitty-gritty aside: It has been a very, very rocky go recently for the health insurance industry in Oregon as health care system costs spiral out of control. In one distress signal, the insurer PacificSource pulled out of the Oregon Health Plan in the Eugene area and said it would stop offering individual plans on the health insurance marketplace. Providence Health Plan’s efforts to outsource a huge part of its operations to a tech company ran aground, and now that longtime major regional insurer says it is set to shut down altogether.
All of this means fewer and more expensive health insurance options for Oregonians.
Some are opting out of health insurance altogether. After Congressional Republicans ended subsidies, Oregon saw one of the larger drops in enrollment on Affordable Care Act plans.
But for the households and employers that will buy health insurance, premium costs are set to continue their rapid rise. In 2027, for example, Regence Oregon individual plans bought on the Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplace are set to see a whopping 20% price hike.
This would mean premiums of $708 per month, for example, for a 40-year old on a Regence Silver-rated marketplace plan. Five years ago, in 2022, the same plan would have cost between $450 to $505 per month.
A Regence spokesperson declined to say how much more it would be paying OHSU to care for its members under the new deal. But the public prices on the health insurance exchange are a decent barometer for rising costs insurers themselves face.
Other negotiations might also offer a clue. In a separate contentious negotiation months ago, Regence said the Legacy Health system was seeking a pay bump of 22% at its hospitals and clinics over the next two years. In May, those systems ended up reaching a deal with undisclosed terms.
