Oregon Doctors seek to form a union

By Taxpayers Association of Oregon Foundation,

Doctors, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center may soon follow the lead of their counterparts in Medford by voting to join a union. Providence Medford doctors voted in April to join the Pacific Northwest Hospital Medicine Association, and a majority of Portland hospital physicians have signed authorization cards. Votes will be counted Aug. 1. More than 1,800 nurses from Providence Portland Medical Center, Providence Seaside Hospital and Providence Home Health & Hospice recently engaged in a five-day strike, the first strike in 22 years.

Doctors are seeking unions because their profession is being pressured and negatively changed as more and more doctors are forced to accept more patients. More and more doctors are being forced into consolidation and away from smaller, more personal family care environments. Doctors are being heaped with more rules, regulations and legal requirements. All of these forces are the result of heavy handed taxes, fees, red tape and legal impositions imposed by Federal, State and local governments. Politicians keep burying the health care industry with more taxes and mandates thinking there is no cost or consequence. The fact that Oregon hospitals have lost nearly half billion in just a half year is a sign that the cost and consequence is real and impactful.