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Late last month, Rep. Dwayne Yunker (R-Grants Pass) had a bone to pick with some of his Democrat colleagues, and sent questions to the legislature’s in-house legal counsel to see what kind of case he had.
Specifically, he was inquiring about the state law around the Universal Health Plan Governance Board—the group charged with designing the administration and funding for a hypothetical universal health care system in Oregon. By statute, the board’s final report was supposed to be delivered to the legislature no later than Sept. 15, but now it was Sept. 30, and the report had still not arrived.
This fact was no great secret or surprise. In mid-August, board executive director Miriam McDonell and chair Helen Bellanca had sent a letter to legislative leaders formally requesting an extension to Dec. 1. They cited slowdowns in the board’s work tied to staffing turnover, board member vacancies, and related delays in the technical documents delivered by consulting firms.
“Granting additional time,” the duo wrote, “will enable Board members to publicly engage more deeply with one another on the key elements of the revenue models under evaluation and to present an accurate, well-supported representation of concepts and strategies reviewed.”
Rep. Rob Nosse (D-Southeast Portland), the House Health Committee Chair, fired back a chipper reply: “I am fine with this request and giving an extension. December 2nd is my birthday!”
A few days later, Sen. Deb Patterson (D-Salem), the Senate Health Committee Chair, chimed in too, responding that it would actually be better if the report came later. Given more immediate concerns regarding HR1—a Trump administration bill with major health system changes—taking up the attention of her and her colleagues in early September hearings, she wrote, “we would prefer to receive this report in December.”
But Yunker, an outspoken critic of the universal health plan concept, saw something sketchy going on here. On Sept. 29, he wrote Bellanca to say the timing raised serious transparency concerns. The election was Nov. 3, he wrote, and the delayed public release of the health care proposal meant lawmakers, stakeholders and the media would not be able to examine its recommendations beforehand.
The next day, Yunker contacted the Oregon Office of the Legislative Counsel to ask if the lawmakers’ responses approving the delay in the report satisfied requirements set out in the law.
The office didn’t have time to do a full review, but the basic answer appeared to be no. “There is nothing in statute that specifically authorizes the committee chairs to grant an extension,” Erin Jansen, Deputy Attorney in the office of legal counsel, told Yunker.
Asked what might be done about this—whether there was, say, a way to force the release of the report as it is—Jansen replied that the law had no enforcement provision, and that Yunker’s only avenue for enforcement would be a “mandamus action.”
The legal counsel also noted that a draft of the board’s report was publicly available on its website.
This is true. For years now, the board’s meetings have been public, and plenty of its documents, including a late draft of the report it is finalizing and its precursor versions, have been easily accessible.
Also, after a series of shifting deadlines, it turns out the board was not getting as mighty of an extension as it had hoped; its members will in fact have to vote on a finalized report in a few days, after leaders reported that a state agency would need several weeks to format and prepare the document to be formally published by early December.
But these counterpoints do not satisfy Yunker. “An email exchange between two committee chairs does not override state law,” he tells WW in an emailed statement. “I believe most Oregonians would be absolutely shocked and deeply concerned if the details of this proposal, its potential costs to taxpayers, and the circumstances surrounding the delay were receiving widespread coverage.”
It is indeed hard to overstate the degree to which the plan the board is preparing to send to lawmakers would, if they approved it or—perhaps more likely—voters approved it, radically transform Oregon’s health care system.
The vision, in which households and employers would swap health insurance premiums for major new taxes to fund a system of health benefits for every Oregon resident, would constitute a historic system transformation. Whether it would bring down costs—or is even possible in this political universe—remains an open and very disputable question, but for now Democrats open to the idea are chugging along, seemingly unperturbed by Yunker’s legal objections, which they dismissed as an effort to distract from a major issue on a minor technicality.
Asked about Yunker’s concerns, State Sen. James Manning (D-Eugene), who sponsored the bill creating the board, wondered why the GOP lawmaker was “so dead-set on poor people and people that work hour-to-hour” not getting the same health care benefits that he and his family have.
“And more importantly,” Manning added, “where is his plan for health care?”
Patterson didn’t respond to a request for comment, but Nosse, the house health committee chair told WW in an email that “I have served for over ten years in the legislature and we have routinely given extensions to taskforces and commissions and work groups who need more time to put together a more complete report.”
Nosse adds that based on the legal counsel’s opinion, Yunker “is welcome to file a mandamus action, something I have never heard of, but okay.” In the future, he says, lawmakers could be more explicit about the mechanism for granting extensions, but that at base this debate is a “a bit of a nothing burger.”
The “bottom line for me,” he wrote, “is that it would be wonderful to have a health care system that is like just about every where else in the world, universal and not tied to employment and the benefit is the same regardless for every resident. This system we have right now is terrible and too expensive and everyone knows it.”
