Article XV, Section 11 of the Oregon State Constitution

This post looks at Article XV, Section 11 of the Oregon State Constitution.  This Article is entitled "Miscellaneous".  The section is entitled "Home Care Commission".  The section has 3 subsections.

Subsection (1)

This subsection creates the Home Care Commission.  It defines the duties of the Commission as the duty to ensure that when someone is hired as a home care worker out of money that is provided by the State or a local government agency, that the quality of care provided is high.  However, this commission looks like they will have duties normally done by the executive branch wherein they have to establish qualification requirements for home care workers and then certify people as meeting those qualification requirements.

Subsection (2)

This subsection defines the membership of the commission, the terms of office and that the members need to be confirmed by the Senate.

Subsection (3)

This subsection defines a number of provisions.  including that the commission's employees are not employees of the state.  So here we have a quasi-governmental certification agency and it is not obvious where they get their funds.

Discussion

Home care is an important social topic.  Certainly because of the demographic imbalances and the onset of the retirement of the so-called "baby boomer" cohort, home care will be an extremely high demand service.  It will also be expensive and it is not entirely clear who all will be pitching in to pay for these services.  My neighbor is an elderly couple.  She's got her health and mobility, but he's disabled due toaa chronic degenerative disease and possibly issues from prior military service.  They have in-home care for him and it is medically necessary.  Having him in an institutional setting would be the wrong solution and this is not palliative care as he certainly could live for 5 or 10 more years.  Whether this is being paid for through a veteran's benefit, old age benefit, pension, medicare/Medicaid or through private insurance, I do not know, I am not going to ask them.  But it has to be having some out of pocket expenses.  That the money is well spent is what the above mentioned Home Care Commission is designed to ensure. Certainly not a simple task and while it might have been designed in the way it was in order to be able to sell it, it makes much more sense to me to have been a full part of the government, both to assure and control funding as well as accountability.