Author

Ben Botkin

Ben Botkin covers justice, health and social services issues for the Oregon Capital Chronicle. He has been a reporter since 2003, when he drove from his Midwest locale to Idaho for his first journalism job. He has written extensively about politics and state agencies in Idaho, Nevada and Oregon. Most recently, he covered health care and the Oregon Legislature for The Lund Report. Botkin has won multiple journalism awards for his investigative and enterprise reporting, including on education, state budgets and criminal justice.

23 AGs praise pharmacies for decision to sell abortion pills

By: Ben Botkin - February 16, 2023

A group of 23 state attorneys general have written to CVS and Walgreen, expressing their support for the sale of two abortion pills by mail. The drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, require a prescription but are considered safe for performing an abortion at home. The pharmacies’s decision will provide millions of people access to the critical […]

Oregon will be the first state to make affordable health care a constitutional right

By: Ben Botkin - November 16, 2022

Oregon will be the first state in the nation to enshrine the right to affordable health care in its constitution. Ballot Measure 111 narrowly passed, with nearly 50.7% of voters in favor and 49.3% of voters opposed. The measure’s long-term impact on Oregon health care is unclear because it doesn’t prescribe how the state should […]

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