At the gubernatorial debated in Eugene on Thursday night, Gov. Kate Brown vowed to neither cut healthcare coverage nor cause eligible people to lose their Oregon Health Plan coverage, even if the Democratic-backed corporate tax increase, Measure 97, fails on Nov. 8.
“We recently added 400,000 Oregonians to our Oregon Health Plan,” she said. “I’m not willing to cut them off or reduce services … I’m not willing to go backwards.”
Brown said if the ballot measure does not pass, she plans to work with lawmakers to find an alternative source of revenue to fill the funding gap for Medicaid -- a proposal that would require Republican support unless her fellow Democrats pick up a seat in the House of Representatives.
Oregon Health Authority Director Lynne Saxton has released a budget asking for a 56 percent increase in general fund revenue, or $1.2 billion. If the state cannot provide its share of the funding, it would lose billions in federal investments and also risk wiping out the improved outcomes and savings from its healthcare transformation.
Her Republican opponent, Dr. Bud Pierce of Salem, also promised not to cut people off the Oregon Health Plan, but he was open to reducing the services covered on the prioritized list, and trimming administration at the Oregon Health Authority.
“I’m not willing to have one person lose insurance,” he said. “I’d reduce the level of services and encourage more charity care.”
Brown is facing a waning challenge from Pierce, who was already behind in the polls and now has struggled to overcome a gaffe from last week’s Portland debate where he suggested women who had a good job and were well-educated “were not susceptible” to domestic violence.
Democrats pounced on his poorly stated comments, hoping to tie him to past Republican men who have lost races after making gaffes about women. Pierce’s campaign spokeswoman quit in protest, accusing Pierce of “victim-shaming.”
Public Waiting for Detailed Proposals from Pierce
The Salem oncologist has spent the past week apologizing profusely for his errant remarks, which he said Thursday had delayed him from releasing detailed budget proposals which he had promised.
Pierce staunchly opposes Measure 97 but has not yet offered concrete alternatives to show how he’d make Oregon’s government more efficient.
Besides Measure 97, Brown and Pierce opposed each most clearly on environmental policy, with Brown refusing to compromise on the state’s controversial alternative fuels mandate in exchange for increased gas taxes for roads and infrastructure spending.
Pierce also opposed recent legislation that will wean the state from coal-produced electricity by 2030, saying he favored incentives for renewable energy rather than cutting off a source of energy so suddenly and risking high electric bills for consumers -- he called foul that the Public Utility Commission had not been invited to that discussion.
But Brown accused her opponent of offering a false choice: “We need both clean air and investment in our roads and bridges,” she said.
Thomason: Sales Tax Could Fund Single-Payer
The debate also featured longshot third-party candidate Cliff Thomason, a southern Oregon hemp farmer running on the Independent platform. For someone who makes a living in the cannabis trade, Thomason had some of the most intriguing proposals, including setting a state goal to build 100,000 new housing units across Oregon.
Thomason had the advantage of speaking as someone with nothing to lose while his opponents stuck to their careful, judicious talking points. He said that the influx of new people in Oregon coming from states with a sales tax might make them open to implementing such a tax here, in exchange for property tax relief.
“They didn’t come here because we didn’t have a sales tax or because we don’t pump our own gas,” Thomason said. “We don’t have consistent funding,” he added, and a sales tax could cover not only the Oregon Health Plan but more radical proposals like a single-payer healthcare system for all Oregonians.
A sales tax might provide a more stable funding stream than Oregon’s continued reliance on the volatile individual income tax, which helps Oregon to be flusher with cash in good times and poorer than others in bad times, he said..
The volatility has made Oregon’s schools vulnerable to slashes in funding and led the state in the past to take away healthcare coverage to people in poverty.
But opposition to a sales tax was a point of agreement for both a veteran politician like Brown, who is well aware that Oregon voters have rejected it 10 times, and the Republican Pierce, whose party is averse to any new taxes.
Thomason said Measure 97 was poorly written and needed to be more broad based rather than just forcing large companies and supermarkets to pay higher taxes, which would be pushed onto consumers anyway.
But Thomason’s sales tax proposal would come down hardest on the working class, since they spend a high proportion of their income on taxable items, and, unlike middle-class homeowners, would be unlikely to see relief in their rent, even if their landlords got a property tax break.
