A Unique Oregon Law Allows It to Block Healthcare Deals. In Five Years, the State Hasn’t Done So Once.
Illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica Dana Gibbon was 18 weeks pregnant with her first baby when her OB-GYN told her at an appointment that she wouldn’t be her doctor anymore. OB-GYN services were ending at the clinic in Corvallis, a college town of 60,000 in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The doctor said all of the Corvallis Clinic’s OB-GYNs were resigning. “We have appreciated the opportunity to participate in your care and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause,” the clinic said in a subsequent letter to patients. The closure of the Corvallis OB-GYN practice came two years after a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest health insurance company, bought the clinic. The subsidiary, Optum Oregon, cited a national shortage of physicians that made it hard to replace doctors who left and increased the workload for those who remained. Gibbon frantically looked for another doctor. Friends recommended two other obstetrics practices, but ...