This letter to the editor was published in The Oregonian on Feb. 29, 2024.
Regence should collaborate with Legacy
I am a parent, pediatrician, a child health advocate, the medical director of a pediatric clinic, a Regence preferred provider, an employer, a cancer survivor, a Legacy Health patient and Regence BCBS policyholder since 2002. I am writing in response to the most recent correspondence that I received from Legacy Health regarding its contract with Regence BCBS.
While volumes can be written about our health care system, I belong, along with my fellow Legacy Health Partners, to a system that focuses on the wellbeing of our patients and their families. As a partner and employer at a clinic, we carefully analyze our insurance options every year; we selected Regence for our staff.
As a patient, I receive routine care that my oncologist prescribes at Legacy Health. I am particularly concerned that insurance companies, including Regence, continue to distort the reality of health care, do anything they can to shift their responsibilities to other parties. Insurance companies are willing to sacrifice the wellbeing of their members for one and only one purpose: profitability.
I join hundreds of providers and health care advocates in this community to voice my concern and urgently demand that Regence promptly collaborate with Legacy Health to resolve any contractual differences and avoid any undue interruption of necessary health care services for Regence policy holders. After all, did Regence not come to a similar (and also much contested) agreement with the Providence Health System in the last year?
Naghmeh Moshtael, Portland