Clark County’s Medicaid population has increased by about 24 percent in the last six months — an increase that translates to more than 19,000 new adults enrolled in the health program for low-income people.
The increase can be attributed to the Medicaid expansion implemented under the Affordable Care Act.
The medical clinics providing care to those new patients say many of them have been without regular care for a considerable amount of time. They have chronic conditions that may not have been properly managed in the past, and they’ve gone without preventive care and screenings.
All of those things mean the patients typically need more complex care requiring multiple appointments and more physician time than those who have had regular access to health care.
As a result, clinics are strained, primary care providers are busy, and waiting times are long. And all clinic patients are feeling the effects, not just those insured by Medicaid.
“We do our very best, but there are limits of how many patients you can safely see in a day,” said Lynnette Pickup, clinic manager at Sea Mar Community Health Centers’ Vancouver medical clinic.
The words “service” and “integrity” come up so often when people speak of Val Ogden that you’d be forgiven for thinking her name was synonymous with them.
But there was something more, something intangible about the community leader and five-term Washington state representative that made her even more special, friends told the standing-room-only crowd at a memorial at Clark College.
“She just brought an aura of charm and grace — I can’t describe it — every time I was in her presence,” said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a longtime friend. “There was a beauty to Val I can’t describe.”
Ogden died of cancer April 9. She was 90.
More than 450 people turned out for the 90-minute ceremony Saturday afternoon.
“All of us were made better as leaders because of her work,” Inslee said, expressing gratitude to her family and her husband, Dan Ogden.
Inslee declared Dan the “Washingtonian of the Day” and gave him an apple pin as thanks for sharing his wife with the community.
While the rest of us are stuck at work next week, two Hockinson teachers will soar to the stratosphere to look at space from the world’s largest airborne observatory.
Just before 7 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday, Kim Abegglen, 42, and Anna-Melissa Lyons, 43, will board a 747SP in Palmdale, Calif., and fly all night long with a group of NASA astronomers. The pair will spend 10 hours each night peering out at Jupiter, black holes, nebulas and other celestial objects from a 2.5-meter-long infrared telescope mounted in the plane.
“To be able to rub elbows with astronomers, I think, is going to be pretty cool,” Abegglen said. “To be able to watch them do what they do is pretty exciting.”
The trip will be quite out of the ordinary for the teachers, who spend their days in a classroom at Hockinson Middle School. Abegglen teaches seventh- and eighth-grade math and science, and Lyons teaches sixth- and seventh-grade math. Until January, neither had even taken an astronomy class.
That month, the two began a 12-week, graduate-level astronomy class once NASA selected them to fly aboard the plane as part of its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy program. The program takes teachers up above the clouds to observe and work with scientists through each stage of their research.
Many applied, and only 24 teachers throughout the nation were picked for the competitive program this year. Abegglen and Lyons are the only two from Washington, and a pair from Medford, Ore., will join them aboard the plane.
Lyons said the trip will help them show their students that learning can be fun and exciting. It’ll also give them an example of how academia can be applied to real world experiences.
“The thing that we hear a lot is: When am I ever going to use this, Mrs. Lyons? Why do I need to know this?” she said.
But it’s pretty much business as usual in the workplace and will likely stay that way until rules and perceptions change about off-the-job marijuana use.
While some employers say they already are taking a light stance on employees who use marijuana in their off hours, many still have zero-tolerance policies enforced by routine screenings that carry no leniency or compromise. Employees who test positive for THC — the chemical in marijuana — are fired immediately, no questions asked, even though voter-passed Initiative 502 made pot use (and possession of 1 ounce or less) legal for adults 21 years and older.
There’s no legal recourse for a worker who tests positive if their company has a zero-marijuana policy, said Linda Frischmeyer, an employment attorney at the Vancouver office of Landerholm Law P.S.
“Nothing about the new law says your employer is required to change its policy,” she said.
Whatever the company’s approach, Frischmeyer said employers should consider spelling the rules out now as the state prepares to license its first marijuana retailers.
“Being clear about the parameters is important,” Frischmeyer said. “It’s better than there being unknowns and assumptions.”
The law provides no protection for workers who consume marijuana. If they test positive for THC residue, which can remain in the body for weeks, their employer won’t know whether it was on- or off-duty use, said Alison Holcomb, drug policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and author of the initiative.
A Catholic priest appeared Friday in Clark County Superior Court on suspicion of trying to lure a 14-year-old girl into his car as she was walking home from school through Vancouver’s Image neighborhood.
Michael T. Patrick, 57, of Vancouver was arrested April 2 on a warrant at Los Angeles International Airport when he re-entered the United States after a trip to Australia. He was then extradited to Clark County.
He is the pastor of the St. Wenceslaus Parish in Scappoose, Oregon, but keeps a residence in Vancouver. His home is in the Image neighborhood, according to Clark County property records. He has no criminal history.
The teen was walking west on Northeast 28th Street near 138th Avenue on March 10 when she noticed a man looking at her “strangely” from inside a blue 2007 Honda Pilot that was traveling east on 28th Street. The vehicle pulled over in the bike lane, and the driver opened the window and told her to get inside, Vancouver police Detective Jason Hafer wrote in a court affidavit.
“No,” the girl replied, according to the affidavit. She said she then began walking faster. The man drove alongside her, asking her several more times if she wanted a ride, and she declined each time, Hafer wrote. He allegedly continued to follow her as she turned north on Northeast 132nd Avenue.
