Air conditioner

“In Oregon, Medicaid is buying people air conditioners.” That headline in The Bulletin and The Washington Post got our attention:

It came with deja vu. That is, in a way, an old story.

If you met with then-Gov. John Kitzhaber, a former emergency room physician, around 2011 you likely heard him tell the air conditioner story. He would talk about an elderly woman, 92, living in Portland with congestive heart failure and no air conditioner. It made life worse for her. It made her heart condition worse. Her heart failed.

The government paid tens of thousands to treat and stabilize her. It would not spend the few hundred to put in a window unit air conditioner and maybe prevent the problem.

It was a powerful anecdote. Kitzhaber used it to help transform Medicaid in Oregon to a system of coordinated care organizations, which had more freedom in how they could spend their money.

Oregon’s coordinated care organizations have had money to buy air conditioners as preventive care. The Oregon Health Authority has actually paid for thousands of air conditioners for patients with qualifying conditions. It’s part of a state effort that includes more than air conditioners, but portable emergency power supplies, air filters for wildfire smoke and more.

It may be news to much of the rest of the country what Oregon is doing. But here it is old news.

Kitzhaber left office shrouded in controversy. But you can’t argue with his logic about preventive care and air conditioners.