Oregon

Oregon first in nation to use Medicaid dollars for air conditioners, power banks to protect against climate change – KTVZ

Published

2 years ago

June 5, 2024

Oregon first in nation to use Medicaid dollars for air conditioners, power banks to protect against climate change – KTVZ

By Samantha Young for KFF Health News in collaboration with Eric Tegethoff, Oregon News Service

PORTLAND, Ore. (KTVZ) — Oregon is shipping air conditioners, air purifiers and power banks to some of its most vulnerable residents, a first-in-the-nation experiment to use Medicaid money to prevent the potentially deadly health effects of extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and other climate-related disasters.

The equipment, which started going out in March, expands a Biden administration strategy to move Medicaid beyond traditional medical care and into the realm of social services.

At least 20 states, including California, Massachusetts and Washington, already direct billions of Medicaid dollars into programs such as helping homeless people get housing and preparing healthy meals for people with diabetes, according to KFF. Oregon is the first to use Medicaid money explicitly for climate-related costs, part of its five-year, $1.1 billion effort to address social needs, which also includes housing and nutrition benefits.

State and federal health officials hope to show that taxpayer money and lives can be saved when investments are made before disaster strikes.

“Climate change is a health care issue,” so helping Oregon’s poorest and sickest residents prepare for potentially dangerous heat, drought, and other extreme weather makes sense, said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on a visit to Sacramento, California, in early April.

Becerra said the Biden administration wants states to experiment with how best to improve patient health, whether by keeping someone housed instead of homeless, or reducing their exposure to heat with an air conditioner.

But Medicaid’s expansion into social services may duplicate existing housing and nutrition programs offered by other federal agencies, while some needy Americans can’t get essential medical care, said Gary Alexander, director of the Medicaid and Health Safety Net Reform Initiative at the Paragon Health Institute.

“There are 600,000 or 700,000 intellectually disabled people in the United States waiting for Medicaid services. They’re on a waitlist,” said Alexander, who oversaw state health agencies in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. “Meanwhile Medicaid has money for housing and food and air conditioners for recipients. Seems to me that we should serve the intellectually disabled first before we get into all of these new areas.”

Scientists and public health officials say climate change poses a growing health risk. More frequent and intense floods, droughts, wildfires, extreme temperatures, and storms cause more deaths, cardiovascular disease from poor air quality, and other problems, according to the federal government’s Fifth National Climate Assessment.

The mounting health effects disproportionately hit low-income Americans and people of color, who are often covered by Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for low-income people.

Most of the 102 Oregonians who died during the deadly heat dome that settled over the Pacific Northwest in 2021 “were elderly, isolated and living with low incomes,” according to a report by the Oregon Health Authority, which administers the state’s Medicaid program, with about 1.4 million enrollees.

The OHA’s analysis of urgent care and emergency room use from May through September of 2021 and 2022 found that 60% of heat-related illness visits were from residents of areas with a median household income below $50,000.

“In the last 10-plus years, the amount of fires and smoke events and excessive heat events that we’ve had has shown the disproportionate impact of those events on those with lower incomes,” said Dave Baden, the OHA’s deputy director for programs and policy.

And, because dangerously high temperatures aren’t common in Oregon, many residents don’t have air conditioning in their homes.

Traditionally, states hit by natural disasters and public health emergencies have asked the federal government for permission to spend Medicaid dollars on back-up power, air filters, and other equipment to help victims recover. But those requests came after the fact, following federal emergency declarations.

Oregon wants to be proactive and pay for equipment that will help an estimated 200,000 residents manage their health at home before extreme weather or climate-related disaster hits, Baden said. In addition to air conditioning units, the program will pay for mini fridges to keep medications cold, portable power supplies to run ventilators and other medical devices during outages, space heaters for winter, and air filters to improve air quality during wildfire season.

In March, the Oregon Health Plan, the state’s Medicaid program, began asking health insurers to find patients who might need help coping with extreme weather. Recipients must meet federal guidelines that categorize them as “facing certain life transitions,” a stringent set of requirements that disqualify most enrollees.

For example, a person with an underlying medical condition that could worsen during a heat wave, and who is also at risk for homelessness or has been released from prison in the past year, could receive an air conditioner. But someone with stable housing might not qualify.

“You could be in a housing complex, and your neighbor qualified for an air conditioner and you didn’t,” Baden said.

At the offices of insurer AllCare Health in Grants Pass, Oregon, air conditioners, air filters, and mini fridges were piled in three rooms in mid-April, ready to be handed over to Medicaid patients. The health plan provided equipment to 19 households in March. The idea is to get the supplies into people’s homes before the summer fire season engulfs the valley in smoke.

Health plans don’t want to find themselves “fighting the masses” at Home Depot when the skies are already smoky or the heat is unbearable, said Josh Balloch, AllCare’s vice president of health policy.

“We’re competing against everybody else, and you can’t find a fan on a hot day,” he said.

Oregon and some other states have already used Medicaid money to buy air conditioners, air purifiers, and other goods for enrollees, but not under the category of climate change. For example, California offers air purifiers to help asthma patients and New York just won federal approval to provide air conditioners to asthma patients.

Baden said Oregon health officials will evaluate whether sending air conditioners and other equipment to patients saves money by looking at their claim records in the coming years.

If Oregon can help enrollees avoid a costly trip to the doctor or the ER after extreme weather, other state Medicaid programs may ask the federal government if they can adopt the benefit. Many states haven’t yet used Medicaid money for climate change because it affects people and regions differently, said Paul Shattuck, a senior fellow at Mathematica, a research organization that has surveyed state Medicaid directors on the issue.

“The health risks of climate change are everywhere, but the nature of risk exposure is completely different in every state,” Shattuck said. “It’s been challenging for Medicaid to get momentum because each state is left to their own devices to figure out what to do.”

A California state lawmaker last year introduced legislation that would have required Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, to add a climate benefit under its existing social services expansion. The program would have been similar to Oregon’s, but AB 586, by Assembly member Lisa Calderon, died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, which questioned in a staff analysis whether “climate change remediation supports can be defined as cost-effective.”

The cost savings are clear to Kaiser Permanente. After the 2021 heat wave, it sent air conditioners to 81 patients in Oregon and southwest Washington whose health conditions might get worse in extreme heat, said Catherine Potter, community health consultant at the health system. The following year, Kaiser Permanente estimated it had prevented $42,000 in heat-related ER visits and $400,000 in hospital admissions, she said.

“We didn’t used to have extreme heat like this, and we do now,” said Potter, who has lived in the temperate Portland area for 30 years. “If we can prevent these adverse impacts, we should be preventing them especially for people that are going to be most affected.”

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Oregon

BLM Expedites Massive Logging Expansion in Western Oregon

Published

2 hours ago

March 11, 2026

Press Room

BLM Expedites Massive Logging Expansion in Western Oregon

The Trump Administration has tasked the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) with boosting resource extraction from public lands across the U.S. That charge includes everything from establishing new oil and gas leasing in Alaska to expanding lithium mines in Nevada.

Now, Western Oregon is the latest area slated for increased commercial output by the BLM. On Feb. 18, the agency announced plans to increase timber harvesting across nearly 2 million acres. Supporters see the move as an economic necessity, while opponents worry about the environmental impacts.

BLM Oregon Timber Harvest: The Plan

The section of public land in question covers about 2.46 million acres of public land across 18 counties in Western Oregon. About 23% of the land is excluded from the project (including areas with low tree density and areas next to streams). That leaves about 1.9 million acres up for harvest.

map of Oregon — Land in yellow is under BLM jurisdiction; (map/BLM)

In a public notice issued on Feb. 19, the BLM announced its intent to revise the resource management plan (RMP) for this area. An RMP is an expansive document that covers recreation use, regulations, and resource extraction for an area of public land. The last RMP for this area was approved in 2016. The agency stated that this “revision” would entail replacing the 2016 RMP with a new one.

The stated goal of the effort is to “seek an increase in sustained yield of timber harvest that aligns with the historically higher levels of production on BLM-administered public lands,” according to the agency.

The 2016 RMP allowed a total harvest volume of 278 million board feet, of which 9% was from large logs. In 2025, the total harvest measured 275 million board feet. The 2026 RMP aims to increase these numbers, but no document explicitly states the target number.

GearJunkie reached out to the BLM for further information, but did not receive a response.

Based on the language in the notice, it’s possible to approximate the levels that the BLM is aiming for. The document says it wants to return production to “historically higher levels of volume.” Data show that harvests peaked in 1964 at 1.638 billion board feet. From 1960 to 1989, the annual average was 1.078 billion board feet.

If the BLM achieves volume 1 billion board feet, that would be around a 260% increase from 2016’s numbers.

‘Reviving Local Economies’ & Reducing Wildfire Threats

The effort to boost timber production relates to Trump’s March 2025 executive order entitled “Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production.” The order mandated that agencies like the BLM and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) “issue new or updated guidance regarding tools to facilitate increased timber production and sound forest management, reduce time to deliver timber, and decrease timber supply uncertainty.”

“Bringing timber production back to historic levels is essential for reviving local economies and reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires,” Acting BLM Director Bill Groffy said in a press release. “President Trump has made it clear — enhanced domestic timber production is vital for our national security, economic prosperity, and effective wildfire management.”

The notice of intent also cited local economic impacts. It notes that more timber would deliver more jobs. When timber production decreased in the 1990s, “this revenue collapse triggered mill closures, job losses, and shrinking tax bases, devastating local communities and forcing counties to cut services and raise local taxes,” the BLM claimed.

The agency also connected increased timber harvesting with a reduction in wildfire risk.

“This RMP revision will assist in reducing fuel loads in order to battle these unprecedented and destructive fires and will aid in keeping the American people safe,” it said.

One of the counties in the RMP, Marion, experienced a major wildfire in 2020. The Lionshead Fire burned 192,000 acres and destroyed 264 homes.

BLM Oregon Timber Harvest Plan: The Opposition

Oregon Wild

Opposition to the move comes primarily from environmental groups. Oregon Wild, a conservation nonprofit, objected on several grounds. It’s concerned about the long-term health of these forests. It also fears the impact that increased timber production would have on wildlife such as the coho salmon and the northern spotted owl.

owl in a tree — Experts say anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 Northern spotted owls remain in the Pacific Northwest; (photo/NPS, C. Arreglo)

The production levels the BLM aims to return to in the 1960s occurred before these species were listed under the Endangered Species Act.

“It’s safe to assume the Trump administration is going to try to get back to roughly 1 billion board feet. However, that would be nearly impossible to do without logging coho salmon and other endangered species habitat,” Oregon Wild’s Communications Director Arran Robertson said in an email to GJ.

Oregon Wild also rejected claims that upping timber production would reduce wildfire risk.

“Clearcutting and similar forms of logging increase fire hazards for up to 50 years. Despite hotter, drier, and longer fire seasons, the Trump Administration aims to again prioritize this practice on public lands,” it said in a press release.

salmon in river — A female coho salmon; (photo/NPS, Jessica Weinberg McClosky)

Sierra Club

The Sierra Club also criticized the move as industry-friendly.

“Opening up millions of acres to logging and supercharging harvest quotas isn’t some minor change — it’s a radical and dangerous departure from decades of careful management for the benefit of logging companies,” Forest Campaign Manager Alex Crave said in an email to GearJunkie. “It aims to take us back to the days of logging old growth across the northwest at a pace that was, quite literally, unsustainable.”

The local Oregon chapter of the Sierra Club was deeply concerned about how this effort would affect outdoor recreation.

“The proposed plan to quadruple logging levels is a threat to the very things that make Oregon Oregon: Forests with clear rivers and streams that provide water for thousands of rural residents and critical habitat for fish and wildlife. Rafting, hiking, mountain biking, hunting, fishing, and other incredible recreation opportunities that Oregonians enjoy and that draw the visitors that rural economies depend on,” it said.

What’s Next

The proposal is open for public comment until March 23. The BLM stated that it does not plan to hold any public meetings about the matter. In accordance with the law, the BLM will consult with Tribal Nations.

“Tribal concerns, including impacts on Indian trust assets and potential impacts to cultural resources, will be given due consideration,” it stated.

The agency will also be required to produce an environmental impact study for its proposed RMP. There is no clear timeline yet; the BLM has stated it wants to complete this process “in an expeditious manner.” Past revisions to RMPs have taken 3 to 4 years, and the BLM aims to finish the process more quickly this time.

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Oregon

Maryland rides big first half to 70-60 win over Oregon to open Big Ten Tournament

Published

14 hours ago

March 11, 2026

Press Room

Maryland rides big first half to 70-60 win over Oregon to open Big Ten Tournament

The Associated Press

March 10, 2026 / 10:42 PM EDT
/ AP

David Coit scored 17 points, Elijah Saunders added 15, and Maryland defeated Oregon 70-60 in a first-round game of the Big Ten Tournament on Tuesday.

Maryland held Oregon to 3-for-22 shooting (14%) with 0 for 10 from 3-point distance in the first half and the Terrapins led 33-12 at the break. Maryland scored the first nine points and the Ducks made their first field goal at the 8:46 mark, making the score 17-8. Maryland later ran off 10 consecutive points for a 31-10 lead. Coit scored 12 points in the first half.

An 11-2 run helped the Ducks cut their deficit to 12 points early in the second half, but Maryland allowed only three points over the next 5 1/2 minutes and the lead was 58-34 near the 8-minute mark. A dunk and a three-point play from Nate Bittle started a 15-2 run for Oregon and it was 60-49 with 4 1/2 minutes remaining.

The Ducks got within single digits a few times, the last at 67-58 with 53 seconds remaining but Maryland’s Darius Adams made 3 of 4 free throws to preserve a double-digit margin.

Bittle scored 16 points, Kwame Evans Jr. 14 and Takai Simpkins 10 for 16th-seeded Oregon (12-20).

Maryland, seeded 17th, got 12 points, six rebounds and five assists from Andre Mills. Solomon Washington also scored 12 points and Adams finished with 10 points for the Terrapins (12-20).

Maryland defeated Oregon for the first time. The Ducks had won the only two prior matchups — both since joining the Big Ten last season. Most recently, Oregon won 64-54 at Maryland in January.

Up next

Maryland plays ninth-seeded Iowa in the second round on Wednesday.

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Oregon

Oregon gas prices highest since Sept. 2025 as oil surges on Hormuz disruptions

Published

1 day ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Oregon gas prices highest since Sept. 2025 as oil surges on Hormuz disruptions

PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — Crude oil prices surged after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran and stalled tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, pushing gas prices sharply higher across the country, though Oregon and Washington are seeing smaller increases than many other states.

The national average price for regular gasoline jumped 43 cents over the past week to $3.54 a gallon.

Oregon’s average rose 31 cents to $4.26 a gallon, the 42nd-largest week-over-week increase among states.

Washington also increased 31 cents, ranking 44th-largest.

READ ALSO | Oil prices spike amid Iran war; Oregon gas remains above national average

The current national average is at its highest price since July 2024. Oregon’s average is at its highest since Sept. 2025.

“When crude oil prices shoot up, pump prices follow suit because crude oil is the basic ingredient in gasoline and diesel. It’s impossible to predict how high prices might go, but expect elevated oil and gas prices as long as the conflict in Iran continues and tankers are stalled in the Strait of Hormuz,” said Marie Dodds, public affairs director for AAA Oregon/Idaho.

AAA notes that, in general, every $1 increase in the price of crude oil leads to a 2.4- to 2.5-cent increase in the price of gasoline.

Crude oil typically accounts for about 47% of the cost of a gallon of gasoline, with refining at 16%, distribution and marketing at 20%, and taxes at 17%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

About 20% of the world’s oil and refined products flow through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passageway of the Persian Gulf bordered by Iran.

Tankers traveling through the strait carry oil from major producers including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, Iraq and Iran. Any disruption can affect global oil supplies. While the U.S. does not rely on Iranian oil, China and India do.

Seasonal factors are also adding upward pressure. Gas prices typically rise starting in mid-to-late winter and early spring as refineries undergo maintenance ahead of the switch to summer-blend fuel, which is more expensive to produce and less likely to evaporate in warmer temperatures.

National gas price comparison/AAA chart

Most areas have a May 1 compliance date for refiners and terminals, while most gas stations have a June 1 deadline to switch to selling summer-blend. Some refineries begin maintenance and the switchover in February.

In Oregon, the average price for regular gas began 2026 at $3.42 a gallon. The highest price of the year so far is today’s $4.26, and the lowest was $3.33 on Jan. 20. Nationally, the average began 2026 at $2.83 a gallon. The highest price of the year so far is today’s $3.54, and the lowest was $2.795 on Jan. 11.

AAA reported that U.S. gasoline demand decreased from 8.73 million barrels per day to 8.29 million for the week ending Feb. 27, compared with 8.88 million a year ago.

Total domestic gasoline supply decreased from 254.8 million barrels to 253.1 million. Gasoline production increased last week, averaging 9.3 million barrels per day compared with 9.2 million barrels per day the previous week.

Crude oil prices have been volatile. West Texas Intermediate surged to near four-year highs around $95 per barrel this week but fell to the $80s today as President Trump signaled the conflict with Iran may end soon.

On the West Coast, all seven states remain in the top 10 for the most expensive pump prices nationally.

California has the highest average for the fifth week in a row at $5.29 a gallon and is the only state at or above $5.

Washington is second at $4.69, Hawaii third at $4.59, Nevada fourth at $4.30 and Oregon fifth at $4.26. Arizona averages $3.97 and Alaska $3.95.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia saw week-over-week increases. California had the largest jump at 62 cents, while Hawaii had the smallest at 19 cents. AAA said Oregon and Washington prices also rose last month after an outage of the Olympic pipeline.

The cheapest gas in the nation is in Kansas at $2.96 a gallon and Oklahoma at $3.01. Kansas is the only state with an average in the $2 range this week. The gap between the most expensive and least expensive states is $2.33 this week, up from $2.05 a week ago.

Compared with a month ago, prices are higher everywhere: the national average is up 62 cents and Oregon’s average is up 68 cents.

Compared with a year ago, the national average is up 45 cents and Oregon’s average is up 53 cents.

Diesel prices also spiked. The national average for diesel rose 89 cents over the week to $4.78 a gallon, while Oregon’s average jumped 72 cents to $5.02.

A year ago, the national average for diesel was $3.63 and Oregon’s average was $3.86.

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