Skip to main content
State Rep. Dwayne Yunker (R-Grants Pass) called on federal regulators this week to scrutinize Oregon Health & Science University’s proposed acquisition of Legacy Health.
Yunker, a member of the House Committee on Behavioral Health and Health Care, wrote to the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division, the federal Department of Health and Human Services, and the Federal Trade Commission, asking them to review the transaction, in part because he fears the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Department of Justice may not take a hard enough look.
“I urge your agencies to review this proposal from the perspective of its potential impact on health care accessibility, costs, and market competition within Oregon,” Yunker wrote Nov. 20. “There has been a lack of clear, publicly available analysis, and the agencies involved have failed to address critical questions about how this merger will affect Oregonians.”
As The Oregonian recently reported, OHSU believes the transaction is exempt from federal oversight because it is a public entity. The paper also noted that most of the 120 public comments the state has received so far oppose the transaction.
Yunker’s letter follows the Nov. 5 election of former President Donald Trump. And while Yunker’s letter did not mention any medical specialties, the next president has made it abundantly clear he disagrees strongly with the direction in which transgender rights developed under the Biden administration. (Yunker could not be reached for comment.)
As Fox News and other outlets have reported during his campaign, “Trump announced plans to ban any hospital or health care provider involved in gender-transition treatments for minors from participating in Medicaid and Medicare.”
Like most hospitals, OHSU relies on payments from both Medicare and Medicaid as part of its payer mix.
Of course, Trump promises a lot of things, and cutting off federal payments to hospitals may be an idle threat. However, Trump’s cabinet choices so far suggest that he will aggressively pursue the agenda he laid out on the campaign trail.
That could set up a faceoff in Oregon because OHA says an important consideration in the transaction for which Yunker wants more scrutiny is the future of gender affirmation surgery.
In October, OHA, one of the agencies responsible for weighing in on the OHSU-Legacy transaction, issued a preliminary report on whether it would serve the public’s interest. (The agency concluded the deal needs a far more comprehensive examination, which is pending.)
In its preliminary review, the health authority highlighted three areas with “potential to result in a significant change in OHSU’s statewide footprint.” One is that OHSU and Legacy Emanuel are the only two level 1 trauma centers in Oregon; another is that both OHSU and Legacy operate the state’s only children’s hospitals. The third: The two systems perform just about all the gender affirmation surgery in Oregon.
“OHSU’s Transgender Health Program and the Gender Care Services Program at Legacy are two of the major providers of gender-affirming care, particularly surgical care, in the state,” the report noted. “The proposed transaction may result in OHSU being the only option for gender-affirming surgical procedures in the state.”
It is unknown, of course, whether federal agencies will take an interest in the transaction as Yunker hopes. But if the feds do come looking, transgender rights, which were not a big issue in Trump’s first presidency, could become a battleground between Washington, D.C., and Oregon this time around.