It doesn't matter which political party controls any part of our federal government. Neither the congress nor the president nor the private health insurance industry are institutionally capable of solving Oregon's moral and economic health care crisis by bringing affordable health care to Oregonians and Oregon public institutions.

It doesn't matter that the Democrats will control our state government. They are just as beholden to their special economic interest groups, visionless and afraid to tackle the failed private health insurance industry as Republican legislators. Democrat and Republican legislators are personally unmotivated because all of them are protected by the best health insurance coverage that Oregon taxpayers can provide. Not a single Democrat in the 2007 legislature nor Ted Kulongoski, the Democratic governor, has a health care plan which is competitive with the Oregon Community Health Care Bill. The highly probable FAILURE to bring affordable health care to Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions during the 2007 legislative session will now be the UNEQUIVOCAL, INDISPUTABLE and UNDENIABLE responsibility of the DEMOCRATS.

My friend and boss, former state senator Bill McCoy, used to tell me when I served with him during the 1981 session, "You win some, you lose most. But that doesn't mean you don't keep trying." For those of you, like me, who believe what Bill McCoy had to say, take heart. My dear readers, despite this dismal prognosis there is something that YOU can do to move a meaningful health care agenda forward. There is something that YOU can do to draw attention to Oregon's moral and economic health care crisis. There is something that YOU can do to bring affordable health care to Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions.

Send Richard Ellmyer to Salem.

Communities of Faith
The moral dimension of Oregon's moral and economic health care crisis cries out to Oregon's religious leaders to seize the opportunity presented by the 2007 legislative session to preach to their congregations that the time has come to take action. There is a vehicle, the Oregon Community Health Care Bill, which addresses the moral question of how those in Oregon's communities of faith can help hundreds of thousands of their fellow Oregonians who remain without the protection of health insurance. It's time to pass the collection plate and -

Send Richard Ellmyer to Salem.

Oregon's Public Institutions - Cities, Counties, School Districts et al.
$625,000,000. That's the approximate value of public services that will be LOST to public institutions throughout Oregon due to just the INCREASES in public employee health care costs during the term of our newly elected governor. Whether it's fewer professors, pupils, police, park personnel or pot hole fillers, every public institution in Oregon is affected. That means that every constituent of every publicly elected official in Oregon will be affected by $625,000,000 LESS in public services over the next four years. Supporting the Oregon Community Health Care Bill can reduce your public institution's health care costs by more than 20%. That means more public services can be delivered to those that elected you to serve them in public office without raising taxes. Check your budget. You'll find enough to - 

Send Richard Ellmyer to Salem.

Public Bargaining Units and Public Employees
The total health care costs for public employees are approaching $1000/employee/month. Skyrocketing, unstoppable, massive payments by governments 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 need to discuss how they want to be perceived by the citizens that pay their salaries and their health care premiums. Leaders of public employee bargaining units need to persuade their constituents that it is in their collective best interests to support the Oregon Community Health Care Bill and -

Send Richard Ellmyer to Salem.

Businesses - Small, Medium and Large
The business of business is to produce products and services not provide health care to its employees. Oregon businesses should enthusiastically and vigorously support the Oregon Community Health Care Bill because it can reduce their collective skyrocketing and debilitating health care overhead by BILLIONS of dollars. Every chamber of commerce and business group in Oregon should see that supporting the Oregon Community Health Care Bill is a wise and sound investment. The best way for business to succeed in an economic self-interest investment of potentially extraordinary high reward with virtually no risk is to -  

Send Richard Ellmyer to Salem

Health Care Providers
It is an article of faith that health care professionals would rather be helping their patients achieve improved health then spending their time dealing with the demands, constrictions and paper work necessary to comply with the private health insurance industry procedures for compensation. The Oregon Community Health Care Bill increases the total number of patients in the health care system for all professional health care providers and dramatically decreases the amount of bureaucratic hassle time.

The private health insurance industry is a cancer growing on the body politic which includes the community of health care professionals. The Oregon Community Health Care Bill is the surgery required to save the patient. The political "surgeon" who developed the procedure is necessary to perform this operation. The patient is in severe pain. As an individual health care professional you can help your community of health care professionals maximize its focus on the practice of health care not the business of health care. It is not only in your self-interest but your professional duty to help Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions achieve affordable health care. Help send Richard Ellmyer to the operating theater. Help -

Send Richard Ellmyer to Salem.

Republican and Democratic Parties of Oregon 
The continuing rise of Independent registration in Oregon and a move for open primaries should be seen as a warning sign. If you want to stem this tide of disenchantment with both of your organizations then you must do something to convince this growing number of voters that your political party has something to offer to those outside the same small base of economic interests that provide the bulk of campaign funding for your respective candidates. The Oregon Community Health Care Bill is legislation that each of your organizations can and should support.

Republicans will find irresistible the ideological appeal of the Oregon Community Health Care Bill which is the most market driven health care plan in America. Republicans will also find it to their liking that all public employees share a single health care pool which can reduce the cost of government health care costs by 20%. Republicans will like the fact that participation is restricted to those Oregonians who have been legally registered to vote for at least one year. Republicans should welcome the opportunity to relieve employers of the responsibility for paying ever more costly and profit reducing health care premiums for employees.

Democrats will like the idea that very large numbers of Oregonians who are uninsured and underinsured can participate in a health care program equal to that of any member of the legislature (An idea similar to that put forward by former Democratic candidate for president John Kerry). Democrats will love the portability of health care coverage based on a sliding scale according to income. Democrats will find the certainty that if a procedure is covered your covered appealing because it removes the stigma of preexisting conditions which very often lead to denial of admitance to health care plans.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties of Oregon should endorse the Oregon Community Health Care Bill's use of all so-called kicker funds to ensure affordable health care for Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions. No other program would have a wider constituency of support for these public dollars. 

The Oregon Community Health Care Bill can achieve a bipartisan majority in the Oregon House and Senate for passage. Find some leftover campaign contributions and -

Send Richard Ellmyer to Salem.

Foundations and Health Care Oriented Non-Profit Organizations
If you are in the business of financially supporting efforts to bring affordable health care to Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions then you need to be creative and assertive in figuring out a way to support the Oregon Community Health Care Bill. The best way to do that is to fund an organization that can easily and quickly incorporate into their plans a legitimate reason to -

Send Richard Ellmyer to Salem

Publishers
No other writer has demonstrated the passion and commitment to advancing the Oregon health care story more credibly than Richard Ellmyer has to 17,000 readers of Oregon Health Watchers. No other writer has authored a legislative solution to Oregon's moral and economic health care crisis. No other writer has thirty years of activist political experience to guide his advocacy, watchdog and journalistic efforts to bring affordable health care to Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions. No other writer is more fearless in speaking the health care story truth to power. If you want your readers to be well informed and connected to the most important and meaningful health care stories to be written during the next legislative session then - 

Send Richard Ellmyer to Salem.

My Fellow Oregonians
Shamefully, disappointingly and disturbingly we Oregonians were denied a serious public conversation on the moral and economic health care crisis in our state by almost all of the candidates running for governor and the legislature. We must speak out now to those who have ignored the most important moral and economic issue in Oregon and tell them that making health care affordable to Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions MUST be the legislature's TOP PRIORITY. Richard Ellmyer can be your voice in our state capitol.

Send Richard Ellmyer to Salem.


Although I am committed to pursuing the passage of the Oregon Community Health Care Bill until the end of the 2011 legislative session I cannot afford to spend time advocating, watching and writing about what's going on in Salem without your help.

I am 60 years old and unlikely to ever have the financial resources to retire from the need to earn a living. For 30 years I have toiled in the political vineyards. Some of that time was spent managing campaigns and working on the personal staffs of former state senator Bill McCoy and Multnomah county commissioner Gladys McCoy. Some of the rest has been spent bringing roads, sewers, street lighting, park improvements and housing rehabilitation dollars to my neighborhood. I've chaired a neighborhood organization and sat on the board of a multimillion dollar Community Action Agency which I helped to shut down because of incompetence and corruption.

A very large portion of my time has been spent successfully defending my neighborhood from toxic chemicals and odors emitted from a local wastewater treatment plant, two amphitheaters which threatened to overwhelm the auditory environment and a nearly six year almost daily effort to stop the mayor of Portland and the Housing Authority of Portland from their indefensible efforts to deny citizens rightful access to public housing statistical data and their perverse operational agenda to concentrate public housing clients into the same few neighborhoods, year after year after year, despite a data less, unmonitorable, unenforceable, so-called public housing policy that says distribution not concentration is the preferred and righteous course of public conduct. The ideas within my proposed legislation to quantify public housing goals in Multnomah county, the 3-6-9 Resolution, were included in the Analysis to Impediments to Fair Housing Report which was sent to HUD and adopted by Portland's Housing and Community Development Commission. HCDC will put my ideas for the quantification of public housing policy on the public table for discussion and debate this winter.

I know that bringing affordable health care to Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions can only be achieved through a grass roots movement. Unless and until more than half of the elected officials in our state - about 751 - support the Oregon Community Health Care Bill the legislature will not do more than tinker at the far edges of comprehensive health care reform. If we Oregonians cannot break the chains of the private health insurance industry then we and our public institutions shall remain captives and continue in perpetuity to pay the painful price of prisoners.

If you are willing to do your part to help me do my part in making our Oregon a healthier better place to live then send me an email indicating your interest and we will arrange to talk.

Thank you. Good luck and good health.


Richard Ellmyer - Advocate - Watchdog - Writer
Oregon Community Health Care Bill author and project champion
President, MacSolutions Inc. - A Macintosh computer consulting business providing web hosting for artists and very small businesses.
Writer/Publisher - Oregon Health Watcher commentary - Published on the Internet and distributed to 17,000 readers interested in public health care policy in Oregon.
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/health.html