PORTLAND, Ore. — Beginning in less than two months, Oregon's largest Medicaid insurer will drop behavioral health service providers currently treating thousands of patients throughout the state, leaving those patients scrambling to find treatment from a smaller and suddenly even more in-demand group of therapists and counselors.

The policy change has provoked an uproar among impacted clinicians and their clients, many of whom are engaged in care for significant mental health conditions.

In Oregon, Medicaid is known as the Oregon Health Plan, and it's offered regionally through servicers known as coordinated care organizations, or CCOs. The nonprofit CareOregon operates two CCOs — Jackson Care Connect in southern Oregon and Columbia Pacific on the north coast — and is a primary partne

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