Category: For Employers
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Executive Summary Southern Oregon is not experiencing a sudden healthcare collapse. What it is experiencing is more dangerous: a slow, quiet degradation of its commercial insurance market that is largely invisible until premiums spike, carriers retreat, and employers stop offering coverage altogether. Across Jackson, Josephine, and surrounding counties, a growing share of middle‑income families are…
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We usually talk about healthcare affordability as a personal problem. Can a family afford the premiums? Can a worker afford the deductible? Can someone nearing retirement afford to stay on employer coverage? Those are real questions. But they miss the larger one. What happens to a region when healthcare becomes structurally unaffordable? This is no…
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A lot of people still talk about healthcare as if the main dividing line is insured versus uninsured. That is outdated. In Southern Oregon, a growing share of residents do have insurance cards. They also delay care, skip prescriptions, avoid specialists, and accumulate medical debt. That is not a contradiction. It is underinsurance. What underinsurance…
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How coverage design is quietly undermining recruitment, retention, and regional healthcare capacity Executive Summary Southern Oregon employers are spending 15-20% more on recruitment while experiencing shorter tenure and higher vacancy costs. The missing variable isn’t wage competitiveness—it’s insurance design creating a hidden retention tax. For workers earning between $45,000 and $80,000, health insurance affordability and…
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Why collective action could stabilize premiums and strengthen regional coverage—and what participation requires Executive Summary Southern Oregon employers face a quantifiable crisis: health insurance costs increased 23% between 2023 and 2025, outpacing both revenue growth and wage increases across most sectors. For a 50-employee firm, this translates to approximately $140,000 in additional annual costs—money that…
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Part Three of a Three-Part Series This series makes the case for a Southern Oregon Community Purchasing Alliance. ReImagine Healthcare is a research and advocacy organization. We do not have the organizational infrastructure to build or operate what we are describing. We are making this case publicly because we believe the right people to convene…
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Part Two of a Three-Part Series Part One of this series argued that Southern Oregon’s provider shortage is a compounding structural problem — driven not just by a national physician deficit, but by a cost-of-living environment that existing incentive programs are not designed to address. High housing costs, poor home appreciation, and a deteriorating wildfire…
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Part One of a Three-Part Series This series makes the case for a Southern Oregon Community Purchasing Alliance. ReImagine Healthcare is a research and advocacy organization. We do not have the organizational infrastructure to build or operate what we are describing. Our role is to put the evidence and the argument in front of the…