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Health-cut plans worry agencies Say budget would hurt poor people By PETER WONG SALEM -- A couple of Rogue Valley nonprofit agencies are concerned about efforts by legislative budget writers to scale back Gov. John Kitzhaber's requests for health services and expanded treatment for drug and alcohol abuse. A legislative budget subcommittee has proposed to cut all but $4 million of $20 million more that Kitzhaber asked for to expand treatment programs. A third of Kitzhaber's addition would go toward youths at risk of committing serious crimes, and the rest toward treatment of adults, prevention programs and housing to enable people to remain drug-free. Kitzhaber, who said expanding treatment is a key toward reducing juvenile crime, denounced the cut as "irresponsible and capricious." "From my perspective, the governor hit it right," said Rita Sullivan, executive director of OnTrack, a drug and alcohol treatment program based in Medford. Sullivan said the extra money would enable programs like hers to reduce waiting times, which for pregnant women range from two to three months. She also said it also would involve families more fully as part of treatment. "It is a step toward recognition that we need to treat families, not just identify the users," she said. The budget subcommittee left $2 million in federal grants, and a matching $2 million from the state's tax-supported general fund, in the budget for the state Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs. The budget subcommittee on human resources has not yet taken formal action on scaling back state health services to poor people. But its target is $46 million, and it is considering some big changes to reach it. Among them are elimination of a health insurance subsidy for people above the federal poverty level, reduction of a participant's cash assets from $5,000 to $2,000 to make some people ineligible for the Oregon Health Plan, and redefining eligibility for the Oregon Health Plan at 80 percent of the federal poverty level. The latter step would essentially undo the plan's premise that all people under the federal poverty level are covered by basic services. That proposal angers Kitzhaber, who as president of the Oregon Senate and a physician was the plan's chief author in 1989. Peg Crowley, executive director of the Community Health Center, said changes of that magnitude would result in more people seeking services from the agency's clinics in Medford, Ashland and White City. "Every time the Legislature tweaks the plan, it results in more pressures for services through our clinics," she said. "In the past, uninsured people may not have realized they were ill, so they did not seek treatment. Now that they have had insurance, they will realize they are ill -- and demand for service will increase." Senate President Brady Adams, R-Grants Pass, who was a founder of a similar clinic in Josephine County, said the scaling back is necessary if the Legislature is to increase state aid to schools. But Kitzhaber said the result is "a tradeoff of devastating cuts to very vulnerable Oregonians in exchange for an inadequate school budget." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA