Special Report — Medicare for All in Oregon, Washington & Beyond

Democratic Party leaders and many of the socialists — and communists — currently running for office, or already in office, continue to push the need for a single-payer system, Medicare for all.

Or to put it a different way, universal healthcare.

The idea for most political strategists is to win big in the midterm elections so Obamacare subsidies can be expanded, Medicaid cuts can be restored and the age of Medicare eligibility can be lowered. That’s the start. From there states like Oregon and Washington plan on pushing a single-payer, universal healthcare system.

For now, California and New York have a head start on both states. But that’s just for now. No state is more ready to launch universal healthcare than Oregon. In 2023, the Oregon Legislature created the nine-person Universal Health Plan Governance Board. It was charged with bringing a plan to give medical, vision, dental and mental healthcare benefits to all Oregonians. There will be no premiums, no deductibles or copays.

Universal healthcare could be put into place if approved by the 2027 Legislature. Or the Legislature could refer the matter to the voters in 2028.

Though the plan is due on December 1st, Health Care for All Oregon was previewed at garden party on September 12th. The board — and other proponents — argue that the public supports universal healthcare. As healthcare grows more expensive, and the insurance more complex, people put off care because of out-of-pocket expenses make it unaffordable.

The leaked plan notes the number-one cause of bankruptcy is healthcare debt.

Jonathan Oberlander is a health policy professor at theUniversity of North Carolina. He believes Oregon is on the right path. "In the short to medium term, there is no chance that 'Medicare for All' can be passed at the national level," Oberlander said. ”That's where the states come in. A state like Oregon provides a more hospitable political environment and a more realistic path to single-payer reform.”

Oberlander and other advocates of a single-payer system say getting this done will be a Herculean effort. Large health insurers and hospital systems will fight tooth-and-nail to defeat any plan setting up universal healthcare. Nine Fortune 500 companies are large health insurers. They have deep pockets and have pushed to defeat such plans at the national and state levels.

It also has to be noted that plans put to the voters went down in Oregon in 2002 and in California in 1994. Colorado didn’t pass one in 2016.

"The aspirations of progressive reformers usually run smack into sobering political realities," Oberlander said. "Translating a slogan into a legislative and political reality is a daunting task.”

All this brings us to the nuts and bolts of the board’s plan. The idea is to keep the current level of spending in Oregon for healthcare by government, business and consumers. New corporate and personal taxes will be assessed to replace health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

All of that money will be put into a pot to pay for hospital, doctor and other practitioner costs incurred by Oregonians.

Board members say big savings will be had when red tape is cut, drug prices are negotiated and fraud is reduced and contained. This will allow the state to give superior benefits to more people.

Miriam McDonell is the executive director of the Universal Health Plan Governance Board. Her board prepared examples of how Oregonians will save.

• Someone making $55,000 a year and picking up an Obamacare silver plan now pays a yearly premium of $5,478

• Under the Oregon plan, there will be no premium and the taxes paid for their healthcare coverage will be $2,331

• A person making under $55,000 a year with Obamacare coverage through their employer pays a premium and out-of-pocket costs of $3,063

• Under Oregon’s plan they will pay zero

• Businesses with payrolls over $500,000 now paying insurance premiums for workers have those dollars shifted into a corporate payroll tax

• Some employees could see a partial tax credit for the taxes paid by their employers

• More affluent people in Oregon will pay more than they do now for health insurance

• How much more is to be determined

The board believes the plan will let 31% to 60% of Oregonians not pay anything for medical, dental, vision or mental health care.

"What we are proposing is something very different,” McDonell said. "Everyone contributes based on the amount that they are able to contribute and not based on utilization.”

Insurers aren’t going to be happy if the plan passes the Legislature and, Becky Hultberg, the president and CEO of the Hospital Association of Oregon, says she’s not sure hospitals will support the plan.

"The universal health plan proposal preserves much of the broken, fragmented status quo and adds new taxes and complexity that Oregonians can't afford," Hultberg said. "With federal policy changes looming, we are entering a period of tremendous upheaval. This proposal could destabilize a system that is already struggling.”

The why is found as you drill down into the plan’s details. Individual doctors and other practitioners will be paid in an areas between the high end of what insurance companies pay for treatment and Medicare’s low-end. Rates set for physician groups will be negotiated and done in a way to shift more money into primary care and less into specialty care areas.

Washington State Commissioner Patty Kurderer wants her state to adopt a single-payer system. Kurderer said she just approved health insurance rate increases for 12 insurers that will raise rates an average of 22% on Washington’s Health Benefit Exchange.

“This is an extra burden on hard-working Washington people and families already struggling with higher costs of living, and I share your frustrations with our for-profit healthcare system,” Kurderer wrote in a news release assuming her audience is frustrated by high insurance costs. “Like you, I don’t agree with our current system or see annual double-digit increases in the cost of health insurance as sustainable.”

However, the commissioner said she had no alternative but to approve the increases.

‘If I were to simply deny any rate changes, health insurers would abandon the state entirely. Fewer options for coverage would drive costs higher and leave people in certain parts of the state without any health insurance options,” Kurderer said. “That’s an even more dire situation for the people buying coverage through the state Exchange — mainly people who don’t get coverage through their job or work for themselves and pre-Medicare age retirees.”

Kurderer noted Washington’s Exchange plan participants has dropped 13% to just 250,000 people. It’s the largest decrease since 2012. She blames a cut in federal subsidies. With that, Kurderer said consolidation of the healthcare system — or universal healthcare — is the answer.

The commissioner said this is why she ran for the office in the first place. She believes healthcare is a human right and ought not to be a profit center for corporations.

“No one should have to make a financial decision over their own health and wellbeing or that of their family members. Instead of grappling with higher costs every year, we should be focused on creating a system that works for everyone, and the blueprint already exists,” Kurderer added. “Universal healthcare is the clear answer and installing a system with better outcomes for everyone is one of my top priorities.”

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a new healthcare tax into law. The California Medical Association and the California Association of Health Plans — representing doctors and insurance companies — say the tax is going to be a huge financial hit for Californians.

The tax is called managed care organization or MCO. It raises premiums $8.85 per month, per person enrolled. It tops out at $100 a year for an individual and $400 a year for a family of four. The California Legislature and Governor Newsom said the tax is necessary to replace income cut by the Trump administration.

Charles Bacchi, President and CEO of the California Association of Health Plan said the plan is illegal according to Prop. 35 that was passed by 68% of voters in 2024.

“California should not resolve its budget shortfall by imposing a massive tax increase on health care costs for working families,” Bacchi said and said his organization and the California Medical Association are going to file suit.

“This lawsuit is about a simple principle: the state has to follow the law,” Dustin Corcoran, the CEO of the California Medical Association said.

California’s Taxpayers Association calls the tax the largest tax increase in state history.

That’s what’s happening at state levels. For years Congress has played with the idea of a single-payer system. Several bills have been introduced but went nowhere. Now, Washington Democrat Rep. Pramila Jayapal said she and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and others in Congress are going to reintroduce the government single-payer system option, Medicare for All Act.

Under Medicare for All Act, everyone will be on a federal healthcare plan. If passed as proposed, private health insurance will be gone.

Jayapal says her Medicare for All PAC did a poll and found 60% of those polled support the idea. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) did a poll in 2019 and found 56% of us support a national health insurance plan.

Dig a little deeper and you find an asterisk. Support for universal healthcare drops to 37% when those polled learn private insurance will be eliminated and not allowed to be sold in the U.S. and they’ll be taxed more to pay for the plan.

Support fell to 26% when told such a plan could lead to longer waits for medical tests and treatment.

Sally Pipes, the president, CEO of Healthcare Policy at the Pacific Research Institute penned an editorial for NewsMax. She wrote about a study done by the Urban Institute and the Paragon Health Institute that found universal healthcare to be very, very expensive.

Looking at various ways the plan might be implemented at the national level, Medicare for All could cost somewhere between $34 trillion and $44 trillion over a decade. The institutes say care will also be inferior.

Make something free, and more people will take advantage.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) came to the same conclusion after looking at different versions of a single-payer system. Demand, the CBO says, will increase faster than what current staffing at hospitals and other medical sources, and what doctors can handle.

The National Health Service said as of July of this year the U.S. has about 6.2 million patients waiting for care. Over 2.5 million of those cases have waited 18 weeks or more. The study found 111,000 people didn’t get the needed care for over a year.

Proponents of universal healthcare hold the Canadian healthcare system as a model. Some Canadian groups will tell you the system doesn’t work all that well. A report in June of this year from the Canadian Institute for Health Information said one in 10 people in emergency rooms in Canada had to wait over five hours to see a doctor.

When you look at this country, and depending on where you live, many people here are experiencing the same problem.

The report said Canadians wanting to see a specialist waited an average 28.6 weeks — or close to seven months — for treatment. That’s 208% higher than the wait time in 1993.

Nadeem Esmail, the health policy director and Steve Globerman, a senior fellow at Canada’s Frasier Institute released a study of the condition of Canada’s single-payer system. They found most Canadians don’t truly understand the cost of their healthcare system.

In 2026 the average amount paid by Canadians for their single-payer system, and the six most common family types, ranges from $6,464 to $21,115 a year.

• Between 1997 and 2026 public healthcare insurance rose 2.3 times faster than the cost of food

• It rose 1.7 times faster than the average person’s, or family’s, income

• It increased 1.5 times as fast as the cost of a place to live

• 10% of Canadians with the lowest incomes pay $637

• A family earning an average of $88,572 a year will pay about $8,644 a year

• Those in the top-10% of income will pay $66,350 per year for healthcare insurance

"That Canada's health-care system is failing patients is obvious to most Canadians,” Esmail and Globerman noted. "Prominent examples of the system's shortcomings include remarkably long queues for procedures and treatments, millions of Canadians without a family physician, and problems with accessing timely emergency care."

The Cato Institute’s economist, Vernique de Rugy said Canada’s legendary system really isn’t working.

"The healthcare market is hindered in many ways, but the core structural problem is simple: The person receiving care is almost never the person actually paying for it. Roughly 90 cents of every dollar is covered by a third party — an insurer or the government,” she said. "When someone else pays, no one shops around, no one compares prices and no one asks whether a service is worth it."

Source link: CBS News — https://bit.ly/4dUpqe8

Source link: Patty Kuderer on Medium — https://bit.ly/4AZl0Nd

Source link: New York Post — https://bit.ly/4dleqXc

Source link: NewsMax — https://bit.ly/4ASPb8C

Source link: The Frasier Institute — https://bit.ly/4rUVJ2C

Source link: Reason — https://bit.ly/4j47qS4