Category: Healthcare Management
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Imagine a tube of toothpaste. Countries with national healthcare systems — Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Japan — have clamped one end of the tube. They exercise price controls or negotiate aggressively as unified national buyers. Pharmaceutical costs in those countries are suppressed. Physics is physics. All that pressure has to go somewhere. It goes…
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Before you can fix a machine, you need to understand how it runs. And the American healthcare system — the largest, most expensive, most complicated healthcare machine ever built — is one that almost nobody, including most of the people working inside it, truly understands end to end. This series is an attempt to change…
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This article stands on its own, but readers interested in its practical implications for Southern Oregon’s healthcare system may find the three-part series on the Southern Oregon Community Purchasing Alliance — also published by ReImagine Healthcare — a useful companion. Something happened to us during the pandemic that we have not fully reckoned with. Not…
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Who Owns Your Doctor? Private Equity and Southern Oregon Healthcare, Part 4 of 4 In June 2025, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed Senate Bill 951 into law. Legal analysts at major law firms called it the toughest state barrier to private equity in healthcare in the country. It was prompted, at least in part, by…
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Who Owns Your Doctor? Private Equity and Southern Oregon Healthcare, Part 3 of 4 There is a question most Southern Oregon residents have never thought to ask about the businesses where they get their healthcare: who owns this place, and where does the money go? For most of the history of American medicine, the answer…
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Who Owns Your Doctor? Private Equity and Southern Oregon Healthcare, Part 2 of 4 In 2020 or 2021 — the exact date is not publicly disclosed — Oregon Medical Group, a physician-founded primary care practice in Lane County, was acquired by Optum, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurance company in the United…
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Who Owns Your Doctor? Private Equity and Southern Oregon Healthcare, Part 1 of 4 There are five physical therapy clinics operating in Medford and Grants Pass right now that most people in this region have never heard of — not as clinics, but as investments. They operate under the name BenchMark Physical Therapy. They have…
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Healthcare delivery in Southern Oregon — and nationally — is shifting. As traditional insurance becomes less affordable and more administratively burdensome, a growing number of clinicians are moving toward Direct Primary Care (DPC) and cash-pay models. This transition is often portrayed as clinician innovation or consumer choice, but it carries structural consequences for the working…
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Most conversations about healthcare start in the exam room. That’s understandable. Care feels personal. It happens one patient at a time, often in moments of vulnerability, urgency, or relief. So when something feels broken—long waits, limited access, rushed visits—we instinctively look to the people closest to the experience: clinicians, hospitals, or policymakers. But the most…
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Southern Oregon doesn’t suffer from a lack of people who care about healthcare. It suffers from a system that makes caring harder than it needs to be. Across Jackson and Josephine counties, patients report difficulty accessing care, providers report burnout and overload, and communities experience growing mistrust toward medical institutions. These issues are often discussed…