To the editor:
Picture a deckhand out of Newport this winter. Crab season opens late again. His boat sits idle at the dock for most of the month — no trips, no paycheck, no hours to show for it. Under new federal rules for the Oregon Health Plan, a month like that could cost him and his family their health insurance. Access to physical and mental health care is on the ballot this year, and here in Lincoln County that couldn’t be more urgent.
Our economy runs on fishing and hospitality, industries with some of the highest rates of uninsured and underinsured workers in the state. Add a large senior population relying on Medicare alongside Medicaid for long-term and behavioral health support, and Lincoln County has an unusually large share of residents exposed to any disruption in coverage.
Our two critical access hospitals, Samaritan Pacific Communities in Newport and Samaritan North Lincoln in Lincoln City, share the same structural vulnerabilities — rural, critical-access, Medicaid-dependent — that have already put hospitals across Oregon at financial risk under the federal reconciliation law signed in 2025, which reshapes Medicaid eligibility and shifts costs onto states.
The Oregon Health Authority estimates up to 200,000 Oregonians — about one in seven Oregon Health Plan members — could lose coverage under the law’s new work and reporting rules, most of them to a missed form rather than because they stopped qualifying. On the coast, where work comes in seasons instead of steady paychecks, that risk falls harder.
Cathie Rigby and Cristen Don have both made health care access a priority of their campaigns for the Lincoln County commission. As commissioners, they could:
- Coordinate with the Oregon Health Authority so residents get clear notice as eligibility rules shift;
- Support local behavioral health capacity and outreach to underinsured service workers and seniors; and
- Keep health care access a standing commission agenda item, not a crisis-only topic.
The county cannot rewrite federal law, but it can make sure no one here loses coverage simply because they didn’t get the notice in time. I’ll be voting for Cathie Rigby and Cristen Don, and I hope my neighbors will too.
— Robin Hochtritt/Depoe Bay
