[The following was written and submitted to the Portland Tribune in response to City of Portland to set its Salem wish list
Mayor, new lobbyist flesh out what to ask of 2007 Legislature By Jim Redden http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=116373030775563100]

The city of Portland has delivered $12,000,000 LESS in public services since Tom Potter took office. By the time his term is up that figure will have risen to $25,000,000 in undelivered public services. And yet, with the exception of commissioner Sam Adams, neither Potter nor any other member of Portland's city council has either a plan or even the slightest interest in reducing the skyrocketing and unstoppable annual rise in our city's health care costs.

Commissioner Sam Adams, along with Lane County Commissioner and former gubernatorial candidate Pete Sorenson, Multnomah county commissioner-elect Jeff Cogen, Multnomah county chair-elect Ted Wheeler et al. support the Oregon Community Health Care Bill in part because it can reduce the cost of health care to public jurisdictions by 20% which means increasing the amount of public services delivered without raising taxes.

The Oregon Community Health Care Bill:
A. Is the most market driven health care plan in America.
B. Removes the burden from businesses of providing health care and places it on the state of Oregon.
C. Reduces health care costs to public institutions in Oregon by 20%.
D. Provides actual health care not just health insurance.
E. Eliminates the term, "preexisting condition." If the procedure is covered you're covered.
F. Provides affordable health care - on a sliding scale according to income - as good as that received by any public employee in Oregon to anyone willing to make a commitment to Oregon for one year as a registered voter.

The Oregon Community Health Care Bill has been the ONLY solution on the public table for the past two years that directly addresses Oregon's moral and economic health care crisis and can bring affordable health care to Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions including the city of Portland. It can succeed because it does not rely on the federal government and the private health insurance industry, both of which have failed and will continue to fail to bring affordable health care to Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions.

Go here to read the Oregon Community Health Care Bill: http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/health.html

Total health care costs for the public sector health care elite are approaching $1000/employee/month. These skyrocketing, unstoppable, massive payments by governments, like the city of Portland, to the private health insurance industry raise the costs for everyone and diminish access to affordable premiums to those not in a public employee health care pool. If Oregon's public sector health care elite don't make a serious effort to change they will continue to breed hostility towards themselves by the general public.

To date, the only option put on the public health care costs bargaining table is what percentage of the total costs of health care can be offloaded onto the public employees' regular paychecks. The long term trend of this approach is not in the interest of public employees.

The Oregon Community Health Care Bill can put the governor, the legislators, the judges, the mayors, the city/county commissioners and every other public employee under the same health care umbrella, assuring all participants the same high quality health care protection. It allows Oregonians who cannot participate in the benefits of the high priced health care premiums enjoyed by the public sector health care elite to jump into that same health care pool thereby engendering good will towards public servants. Public employees such as Tom Potter, Erik Sten, Dan Saltzman and Randy Leonard need to discuss how they, their personal staffs and those public employees that they manage want to be perceived by the citizens that pay their salaries and their health care premiums.

The city of Portland needs to send its lobbyist to Salem with instructions to vigorously support the Oregon Community Health Care Bill.