In Oregon, a bold healthcare proposal

Nine years ago, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton put together a comprehensive healthcare proposal that crashed and burned – probably a key factor in Republicans taking over the US House a year later. Since then, various attempts to reform national healthcare have also faltered.

Now, states are taking the lead in considering universal healthcare – providing government medical care to everyone. Thirteen states are on this path, with Oregon in the forefront. In November, voters here will consider a revolutionary ballot measure that would use tax dollars to provide full healthcare for every state resident.

It would raise taxes, but proponents say it also would save billions of dollars a year – mainly by reducing administrative costs from about 25 percent down to 5 percent. Oregon's measure also would provide healthcare to several hundred thousand people now without health insurance, many of them children.

"People are really ready for a big change in the system," says Britt McEachern of Health Care for All Oregon, the grass-roots group promoting the ballot measure. "Everybody we've talked to has a problem with health insurance or they know a friend who has a horror story."

The proposal comes at a time when the numbers of those without health care across the United States is approaching nearly 40 million, when Americans are spending about $4,700 per person on health care each year (almost twice the level of other countries), and when the quality of healthcare in the US is ranked by the World Health Organization as 37th – below that of many far less affluent countries.

But opponents from around the US, led by insurance companies and other business groups, can be expected to mount a large and expensive campaign to fight the Oregon measure. After all, opponents of the Clinton plan used the very effective "Harry and Louise" television ads to kill that proposal.

"Its sky's-the-limit coverage would mean skyrocketing costs," warns Associated Oregon Industries, a lobbying group that represents some 20,000 companies. "Taxes to pay those bills will hurt individual taxpayers, cripple Oregon businesses, and cost Oregon jobs."

Opponents also point to Canada's single-payer health care system where some people now have to wait months for certain medical procedures or travel to the US for treatment.

Some Canadian provinces are thinking about privatizing the system. Others say this is because the level of health-care spending is set by lawmakers beholden to campaign contributors – including health insurers who prefer a private system.

Supporters of universal health care may face an uphill battle, but the political landscape has changed considerably from the early 1990s.

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