During the course of 2025, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) convened a Rulemaking Advisory Committee to consider changes to the Health Care Market Oversight Program (HCMO).
While there was some initial, guarded optimism that these rules could be recognition of a program that has gone off the rails, those hopes were quickly extinguished. HCMO continues to expand – charging exorbitant fees and passing on its costs to the applicants – and there is no incentive or accountability for this program to reign itself in.
Like a number of other programs operated by OHA’s Health Policy and Analytics Division, HCMO continues to be misaligned with the Legislative Intent of the law and public interest. OHA’s unfettered expansion of this program requires a legislative fix, or a serious change in philosophical approach, before programs like these drive health care systems and independent providers out-of-business or into the arms of the types of organizations the law was meant to protect against.
Last week, Asante’s Chief Public Affairs Officer and General Counsel, Kristen Roy, testified against the negative impacts of these rule changes.
She highlighted the damaging impacts of the massive fee increases, arbitrary civil penalty regime and other new requirements that place an unsustainable burden on smaller, local systems and providers trying to navigate this process – as was directly illustrated by the recent, withdrawn Asante and Surgery Center of Southern Oregon transaction.
A copy of Asante’s written comment can be found here.
