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Finance and Revenue Committee

About

The Finance and Revenue Committee is responsible for developing recommendations to the board on a sustainable and equitable unified financing strategy for a universal health plan in Oregon. The committee will study and address the effects of the universal health plan on employers, individuals and families, and the Oregon economy. The committee meets on the third Tuesday of every month at 9 a.m. It is comprised of two Universal Health Plan Governance Board (UHPGB) members and seven members of the public. The committee is supported by UHPGB staff member Jennifer Donovan and Oregon Health Authority Policy Analysts Jessica Merino and Danielle Ross.

Meeting Calendar and Materials

Committee Member Resources

Committee Members

Cherryl Ramirez has served as executive director of the Association of Oregon Community Mental Health Programs (AOCMHP) for 12 years. The association represents community mental health programs that manage and provide services for people with mental health and substance-use disorders and community developmental disabilities programs that provide case management services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The association also provides a wide array of trainings in the areas of mental health promotion and clinical services, suicide prevention and post-suicide intervention, and mobile crisis services, and it houses the Alliance to Prevent Suicide. Cherryl advocates for policies and resources to support and improve the community behavioral health and developmental disabilities systems in collaboration with behavioral health associations, human service advocacy organizations, and other system partners.

Cherryl served four years as president of the National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Directors Board and four years as its past president. She also represented the public behavioral health system on the Joint Task Force on Universal Health Care. Before her position with AOCMHP, Cherryl served as the executive director of the Association of Community Mental Health Authorities of Illinois for eight years.

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Chunhuei Chi is a professor at the Oregon State University College of Health and affiliated with its Health Management and Policy Program and Global Health Program. He completed his master’s degree in international public health from the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston and holds a Doctor of Science in health policy and management from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His doctoral research was focused on health system finance, health insurance coverage, and access to health care.

Chunhuei has helped promote universal health care in Oregon and the United States. He testified three times before the Oregon Legislature to support universal health care in the state. He also contributed to establishing Taiwan’s universal health care system and continues to serve as a policy advisor and give workshops in Taiwan. He continues to research the universal health care systems of Chile, South Korea, and Taiwan. He published peer-reviewed papers focused on community ownership and health governance, equity in health, health care, and the financial burden of health care in Bangladesh, Chile, Ecuador, and Taiwan.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chunhuei also developed expertise in international comparative pandemic control policies and was interviewed by U.S. and international media more than 400 times.​

​​Mary Lou Hennrich holds a master's degree in nursing and community health from the University of Portland. Born in Oregon, Mary Lou has served Oregonians in a career of public health and health care advocacy for more than 50 years. She began as a public health nurse for the Multnomah County Health Department. She rose through a variety of leadership positions, including managing or creating programs related to maternal-child health, health promotion, and community-based primary care. In 1985, Mary Lou implemented Oregon’s first school-based health clinic at Portland’s Roosevelt High School. She was the founding chief executive officer of CareOregon (1994-2003) and then served as director of the Oregon Public Health Institute. At the institute, she led work that resulted in laws establishing nutrition standards for foods and beverages sold in public schools in addition to state and national restaurant menu labeling laws. Mary Lou chaired the Oregon Coalition of Local Public Health Officials and has received lifetime achievement awards from the Oregon Public Health Association and the Oregon Health Forum. A proud 50-plus-year member of the Oregon Nurses Association, she has spent her career fighting for justice and equity in health care. She founded the Billi Odegaard Scholarship Fund to provide nursing scholarships to achieve diversity in nursing—excellence in care. In her spare time she enjoys cooking, traveling, camping and spending time with her grandchildren.​

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​​John Santa, M.D., MPH, is a retired primary care doctor and health administrator. He has worked in multiple health organizations over the past 50 years including as administrator of the Office for Oregon Health Policy and Research from 1999 to 2003. He has been involved in multiple public and private startup organizations. John has been on Medicare for nine years and has served on the Task Force for Universal Health Care and the Oregon Health Policy Board.​​

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Richard Gibson, M.D., has served as physician informaticist and medical director at Comagine Health since 2018, where his work includes health care cost analysis and health data exchange. Richard has more than 45 years of health care experience, first as a family physician and emergency physician, then installing electronic health records in provider offices and hospitals, followed by analyzing health data. He has a Ph.D. in medical informatics and a Master of Business Administration. Richard is primarily motivated by wanting to alleviate financial stress for Oregonians and their families as they face challenging medical problems and injuries.​​

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​​​Charlie Swanson is a retired high school and community college teacher of math, physics, and chemistry. He has worked on health care financial data analysis in Oregon since 2014, first as a liaison between Health Care for All Oregon and Dr. Gerald Friedman, when he did the 2014 economic analysis of the Health Care for All Oregon Plan; as an overseeing activist for the 2017 Rand Corporation report “A Comprehensive Assessment of Four Options for Financing Health Care Delivery in Oregon”; as a member of the Universal Access to Health Care work group convened by Rep. Mitch Greenlick in 2018; and as a health care advocate working to keep Oregon’s Task Force on Universal Health Care grounded in appropriate data. Charlie has done extensive analyses of health care expenditures in Oregon and Medicaid nationally.​

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​​​Bethany Stairs is a certified family nurse practitioner and the medical director at Wallace Medical. Bethany completed her Master of Science in nursing from the University of California Los Angeles in 2009, her Master of Business Administration in health care from Oregon Health & Science University in 2023, and her Doctor of Nursing Practice from Frontier Nursing University in 2024. Since becoming a nurse practitioner, Bethany has worked in a variety of primary care and urgent care settings, primarily working in community health. She is passionate about providing care to underserved communities and has focused her career on improving health equity both with patients and among her staff. ​​

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Jeff Gudman is a lifelong Oregon resident. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics at Pamona College and a master’s degree in business at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Jeff worked for Fortune 500 companies, startups, and mid-size companies. He served eight years on the Lake Oswego City Council and has been on numerous nonprofit boards through the years – currently as treasurer of the Clackamas Free Clinic, member of the Mary’s Woods retirement community’s board of directors, treasurer of Seniors Advocating for Generational Equity (SAGE), treasurer of the Willamette Falls Heritage Council, and an at-large member of the Oregon Swimming Board of Directors.​​

Over the past decade, Chris Hogan has had the pleasure of serving Oregon Health Plan members in Coos and Curry counties as part of Advanced Hea​lth’s coordinated care organization team. In frontier Oregon, patients and providers are faced with a unique set of challenges, including geographic isolation, increased severity of illness and the intensity of required care, and adverse payer mix. In Chris’ role on this committee, he hopes to voice those challenges and help build a universal coverage system that does not leave rural communities behind. He firmly believes health care is a right for all Oregonians.​

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