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A panel of Oregon lawmakers this week took public testimony over two days at the Capitol in Salem on a proposed nine-member governance board that would devise a universal health plan that would cover every Oregonian.
Under Senate Bill 704, the governance board would be tasked with coming up with what a single-payer system would look like in Oregon.
Most, if not all, of the testimony over the two days focused on the pros and cons of such a system.
In response to questions from the chair of the Senate Committee on Health Care, a chief sponsor of the bill, Sen. James Manning Jr., D-Eugene/Veneta, affirmed on Wednesday, the second day of public hearings, that the bill only establishes a governance board and does not put into place a universal health care plan. The Legislature would still need to approve the proposal at a later date.
In 2019, Oregon lawmakers created the Joint Task Force on Universal Health Care. The end result of its work was a 223-page report it approved last September that included a list of recommendations, including creating the governance board during this year’s legislative session.
“The intent, and the intention of this bill, is that if you live here in our great state of Oregon, you should have and will be entitled to receive equitable health care,” Manning testified before the committee Monday, the hearings’ first day.
He said an actuary from New York testified to the workgroup that a single-payer system could save the state a billion dollars a year.
As outlined in the workgroup’s report, the plan would eliminate deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, and other out-of-pocket costs. It would decouple health insurance from a person’s place of employment, allowing people to keep their health plan and doctors.
The program would eventually be overseen by a nonprofit public corporation.
Watch Day One of the Hearing:
Most of the people who signed up to testify over the two days, or who submitted written testimony, were in support of the idea of a state-run universal health plan. But there were opponents.
Tom Holt, a lobbyist for the Oregon Association of Health Underwriters, told lawmakers Monday that a government-run, single-payer system was “destined to ultimately crash and burn.” He said he supported incremental improvements to the system.
“There’s just heroic assumptions” about the workgroup’s plan, he said. “There’s really no explanation of this so-called billion-dollar savings that’s going to materialize. It is not as simple as many of us would like it to be.”
As far as the governance board is concerned, which is the focus of the bill that’s under consideration this year, the governor would appoint the members who would need to be confirmed by the Senate. Many would be required to have professional health care experience. The members would serve at the pleasure of the governor.
Members would receive a salary and would be eligible for the state’s Public Employees Retirement System, or PERS.
They would be required to devise a single-payer system, a plan for implementation and present it to lawmakers for consideration by September 2025 with the goal of having a system in place by the beginning of 2027.
The bill would also establish The Universal Health Plan Trust Fund, which would be used to fund the administration and operation of the plan.
Separately, Oregon voters approved Measure 111 last November, which established a right to affordable health care in the state’s Constitution, but it did not set up a system.
A work session for SB 704 is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 1 p.m. in the Senate Committee on Health Care in room HR B at the Capitol.
Watch Day Two of the Hearing:
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