Depending on how you look at it, the Portland City Council today either took a bold step forward in providing health care for the city’s estimated 12,000 uninsured kids, or rather slyly co-opted a successful, out-of-left field grassroots campaign.
The Why Not Portland? campaign, led by local doctors Gregg and Marcia Coodley, had spent months gathering 40,000 signatures to place a kids’ health care measure on the November ballot. Commissioners quickly made a deal with the campaign to withdraw their measure and let the council deal with the issue. Today, Commissioners voted unanimously to…wait for it…set up a committee.
(Check Commissioner Sam Adams’ website if you want to sit on it—the committee, that is.)
The “Kids Care Committee” will study how best to pay for and provide basic health coverage to all children who attend public school in Portland, plus babies and toddlers. They’re supposed to figure this out by December (tick…tick…tick), with the plan ready for implementation in September 2009.
By that time, President Barack Obama (knock on wood) and the state Legislature may have rolled out their own health care plans, thus unburdening the city of the new responsibility it’s taken on. Or not.
“Ultimately, the best solution should come from the federal government or from the state,” said Adams, the mayor-elect. “If no action is taken on the federal or state level, we will be ready with our own plan.”
Why would the council want to delay this issue, which everyone says is so very important? Because other projects in the pipeline also need money from taxpayers.
Adams, for one, still hopes to bring his $464 million transportation funding package to voters in November. And Commissioner Dan Saltzman is driving a $74 million Children’s Investment Fund levy, also set for the general election ballot.
With times so tight for people, those arguably just as worthy measures might not have fared well next to kids’ health care. Just imagine the ad campaign.
So, WW’s final spin on Portland-specific, locally funded children’s health care? Don’t hold your breath. As Mayor Tom Potter put it today: “At the end of 2009, if Portland is the only agency participating in this, there’s going to be an issue over funding.”
No kidding.
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MYOB – Health Care Is A State And Federal Responsibility
The city of Portland has no business being in the business of providing health care to anyone but its employees, and the sustainability of that contribution of up to $1,246/month needs to be reevaluated.
There is only one health care decision that the Portland city council should and MUST address.
1. Does it instruct the city’s Salem lobbyist to:
A. Support the Oregon Community Health Care Bill? (Which involves no new taxes, will reduce public institutional expenditures for health insurance by 20% and provides equality of health care for public employees and citizens.)
B. Support Senate Bill 329? (Which, according to Representative Mitch Greenlick, will cost an additional Billion dollars in taxes and relies on the failed private health insurance industry model assuring continued unsustainable escalation of public institutional health insurance contributions.)
C. Do nothing. Support the status quo?
Here’s a letter to consider.
March 12, 2007
Dear House Speaker Merkley and Senate President Courtney:
The current legislative debate over health care reform in our state does not include our view that 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 and that 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.
We request that you find a place holder bill in each chamber which would substitute in its entirety the language of the Oregon Community Health Care Bill (see attached) so that an alternative choice may be discussed and debated this session. The Oregon Community Health Care Bill is the only current fully formed piece of proposed legislation which supports our vision of health care reform. We would welcome others that also meet our requirements.
Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
Richard Ellmyer – Oregon Community Health Care Bill author
Sam Adams – Portland City Council
Jeff Cogen – Multnomah County Commissioner
Edwars "Chip" Enbody – Hubbard City Council
Darrell Flood – Mayor of Lafayette
Bill Hall – Lincoln County Commissioner
Jim Needham – Mollala City Council
Michelle Ripple – Wilsonville City Council
Mary Schamehorn – Mayor of Bandon
Pete Sorenson – Lane County Commissioner
Neither the leadership nor any member of the Oregon legislature was willing to acknowledge or consider much less implement the modest proposal of ideas of this request by elected officials representing about a million Oregonians.
Commissioner Sam Adams asked representative Tina Kotek and state senator Margaret Carter to submit the Oregon Community Health Care Bill in the 2007 legislative session. They both refused.
Mayor-elect Sam Adams needs to request every Oregon legislative candidate representing a Portland constituency to campaign for and then if elected introduce and support the Oregon Community Health Care Bill.
Mayor-elect Sam Adams needs to focus on a state legislative solution to Oregon’s moral and economic health care crisis and stop being diverted by requests for narrow special interest and special constituency attention.
Richard Ellmyer
Oregon Community Health Care Bill author and project champion
President, MacSolutions Inc. – A Macintosh computer consulting business providing web hosting for artists and very small businesses.
Writer/Publisher – Oregon Health Watcher commentary – Published on the Internet (http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/health.html) and distributed to thousands of readers interested in public health care policy in Oregon. To Subscribe: HAP-Watchers-on@goodgrowthnw.org