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The 2011 Oregon Legislative Assembly Will FAIL, Again, To Produce Comprehensive Health Care Reform To Address Oregon's Moral And Economic Health Care Crisis

There are three choices related to comprehensive health care legislation this session.

1. Support $700,000,000 in new taxes to pay for the IOU left on the table from the previous sessions' Billion dollar health care bill.

2. Support Single-Payer legislation recently sent to committees in the House and Senate. 

3. Other? Includes the status quo. Asking public employees to contribute more to their health insurance benefits is NOT a comprehensive solution. Diddling with the size of the Oregon Health Plan is NOT a comprehensive solution. Piling more money on health care for children is NOT a comprehensive solution. Asking for any help or favors from the federal government is NOT a comprehensive solution to Oregon's moral and economic health care crisis.

All available evidence persuades me to write with confidence that there is no possibility that new taxes will be enacted to pay for the 700 million IOU nor is there a snowball's chance in hell that Single-Payer will ever come up for a vote on the House floor. Chances that either $700,000,000 in new taxes to pay for the languishing health care bill from previous sessions or a Single-Payer health care plan would be passed by either chamber much less both are zero to none.

There is no larger nor more important social and economic issue before the Oregon legislature than the health care of Oregonians which affects every individual and every public institution and every business in our state.

The profit oriented private health insurance industry must not be the model upon which a solution to Oregon's moral and economic health care crisis should be based. Oregon elected officials - public employees - voters and taxpayers must have EQUAL ACCESS to the SAME LEVEL of health care NOT a perpetuation of our current multitiered health insurance CLASS system.

 Sadly, the 2011 Oregon legislature has already failed on this vital public policy issue. The rest is just a charade.

Richard Ellmyer

North Portland 

posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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