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Who Owns Your Doctor? Private Equity and Southern Oregon Healthcare, Part 2 of 4 In 2020 or 2021 — the exact date is not publicly disclosed — Oregon Medical Group, a physician-founded primary care practice in Lane County, was acquired by Optum, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurance company in the United…
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Who Owns Your Doctor? Private Equity and Southern Oregon Healthcare, Part 1 of 4 There are five physical therapy clinics operating in Medford and Grants Pass right now that most people in this region have never heard of — not as clinics, but as investments. They operate under the name BenchMark Physical Therapy. They have…
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You visit your primary care doctor complaining of persistent fatigue and difficulty sleeping. Blood work comes back normal. Your doctor mentions stress might be a factor and suggests you “try to relax more.” You leave with no concrete help, your symptoms unchanged, wondering if you imagined the whole thing. This scenario plays out thousands of…
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You visit your primary care doctor complaining of persistent fatigue and difficulty sleeping. Blood work comes back normal. Your doctor mentions stress might be a factor and suggests you “try to relax more.” You leave with no concrete help, your symptoms unchanged, wondering if you imagined the whole thing. This scenario plays out thousands of…
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Healthcare delivery in Southern Oregon — and nationally — is shifting. As traditional insurance becomes less affordable and more administratively burdensome, a growing number of clinicians are moving toward Direct Primary Care (DPC) and cash-pay models. This transition is often portrayed as clinician innovation or consumer choice, but it carries structural consequences for the working…
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Most conversations about healthcare start in the exam room. That’s understandable. Care feels personal. It happens one patient at a time, often in moments of vulnerability, urgency, or relief. So when something feels broken—long waits, limited access, rushed visits—we instinctively look to the people closest to the experience: clinicians, hospitals, or policymakers. But the most…
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When national headlines focus on healthcare consolidation—hospital systems acquiring physician practices, private equity buying clinics, insurers merging into ever-larger entities—it’s easy to assume this is simply how healthcare works now. But in Southern Oregon, a quieter and more instructive model has been operating for decades. AllCare Health, the coordinated care organization serving roughly 70,000 people…
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When national headlines focus on healthcare consolidation—hospital systems acquiring physician practices, private equity buying clinics, insurers merging into ever-larger entities—it’s easy to assume this is simply how healthcare works now. But in Southern Oregon, a quieter and more instructive model has been operating for decades. AllCare Health, the coordinated care organization serving roughly 70,000 people…
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The Sugar Nomenclature Problem: Why Language Matters Healthcare policy and public health messaging suffer from imprecise language around “sugar.” This linguistic ambiguity enables misleading marketing, confuses consumers, and undermines effective policy. The Problem: The term “sugar” encompasses dramatically different molecules with distinct metabolic effects: Why It Matters: Identical chemical formulas (C₆H₁₂O₆) don’t guarantee identical metabolic…
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Modern medicine has produced extraordinary breakthroughs. Diseases that were once fatal are now treatable. Conditions that once meant lifelong disability can be managed or even cured. Yet access to these advances remains deeply uneven. Across low- and middle-income countries, millions of people still cannot obtain essential medications—not because the science doesn’t exist, but because the…
