Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced Oct. 21 a campaign to get five hospital reform ballot measures on Oregon’s November 2014 ballot. The campaign will be a joint effort by SEIU locals 49 and 503, led by Local 49, which represents hospital support workers at Kaiser Permanente and Legacy Health Systems.
The prospective initiatives are:
- Minimum Charity Care in Hospitals. Require non-profit hospitals to spend at least 5 percent of payments for hospital services on charity health care and community health service.
- Pricing Transparency in Hospitals. Require hospitals to display, on site and online, the “actual price charged” for common procedures.
- Quality Transparency in Hospitals. Require hospitals to display online and on site, quality of care performance measures like infection rates, mortality rates, and patient satisfaction rates.
- Reasonable Rates in Hospitals. Cap hospital prices at 30 percent above the actual cost of providing care.
- Caps on Executive Compensation. Limit executive compensation to no more than 15 times the wage of the lowest paid employee.
Backers turned in initial paperwork to the Secretary of State Elections Division Oct. 22. The next step is to collect 1,000 signatures on each petition, at which point the state would issue a ballot title and approve the initiative petitions for general circulation. Each initiative would need 87,213 valid signatures of registered voters by July 3, 2014, in order to qualify for the ballot.
