John Frohnmayer, candidate for US Senate and former head of the National Endowment For The Arts, demonstrated his courage, honesty, intelligence and leadership skills when he announced at a press conference at the state capitol in Salem on December 17 that he supports the Oregon Community Health Care Bill at the state level and a single payer solution at the national level to resolve the moral and economic health care crisis we face in Oregon and America. Bravo and thank you John Frohnmayer.

You can see the Frohnmayer press conference video here soon: http://www.ivotejohn.com. You can read his delivered remarks below.

Poll Shows Frohnmayer In 2nd Place With Upward Momentum
A recent scientific telephone poll by Riley Research Associates taken between November 30 and December 12, 2007 was conducted among 401 randomly selected registered likely voters throughout Oregon. A sample of 401 provides accuracy to within +/-4.89% at a 95% level of confidence. The results showed Gordon Smith at (39%), followed by John Frohnmayer (14%) and Jeff Merkley (12%), with many undecided (35%). These very early results are nonetheless quite amazing and impressive considering that the Oregon press corps has barely mentioned John Frohnmayer. As voters, especially those without adequate health care, find out that John Frohnmayer is not only in the race but supports health care reform plans that reject the failed private health insurance industry as a model for our future, Frohnmayer's numbers will continue to rise.

You can find details of the poll results here: http://www.indparty.com/node/63

Oregonians registered with any political party or no political party that want serious and meaningful health care reform in Oregon and America should support John Frohnmayer with their money and their time now and, for those citizens that are not disenfranchised and are allowed by the restrictive, undemocratic and self-serving rules of Republican and Democratic legislators, their votes by write in during the May primary election.

John Frohnmayer can, should and will win the election for US Senator in November 2008.

Call To Candidates For Public Office
Every candidate for public office anywhere in Oregon, school board, ESD board, community college board, city council, county commission and legislature must choose between the Oregon Community Health Care Bill, SB329 or the status quo before the end of the next legislative session in 20 months. Please join the first enlightened candidates for public office in Oregon to step forward this election cycle and demonstrate both good judgement and courage by supporting the Oregon Community Health Care Bill:
US Senate candidate John Frohnmayer
Portland city council candidate Jeff Bissonnette
Portland city council candidate John Branam
Portland city commissioner and Portland mayoral candidate Sam Adams.

All candidates for public office in Oregon that support the Oregon Community Health Care Bill will eventually be mentioned in an edition of Oregon Health Watchers and listed on the Oregon Health Watchers website.

Call To Voters
Every Oregon voter must choose between the Oregon Community Health Care Bill, SB329 or the status quo before the end of the next legislative session in 20 months. I urge you to support candidates Frohnmayer, Bissonnette, Branam, Adams and any others as they are identified that support the Oregon Community Health Care Bill. These candidates deserve your attention and support now and your votes in May and November of 2008.


Richard Ellmyer
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 Watchers - Published on the Internet (http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/health.html) and distributed to 16,000 readers interested in public health care policy in Oregon.
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PRESS CONFERENCE,  REMARKS ON HEALTH CARE COVERAGE
December 17, 2007
JOHN FROHNMAYER, Candidate for U.S. Senate 2008

Dave Flowers owned a Pizzeria. He had 25 employees but couldn’t provide health insurance because he couldn’t afford the premiums. He experienced the health care crisis by living it - a viral infection almost collapsed his heart. While he found insurance for his wife and two children, no insurance was available to him because of his pre-existing condition.  He couldn’t work full time and he was frustrated and scared  -- one major illness or injury away from financial ruin. You know Dave because he is just like your neighbor, your co-worker, maybe yourself.

Germany has had universal health coverage since 1883 - 125 years. Canada has had it for 40 years. We believe in the inalienable right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and we can’t have life without health.

During this holiday season, we will read some of the most heart wrenching stories, and many of us will offer our help, but individuals cannot help all the 600,000 uninsured Oregonians. This is the United States of America in the 21st century. We must do better.

In 2005, the United States’ largest private health insurer, United Health Group, paid its CEO 122.7 million dollars in salary. Within the last month, California fined Health Net, another major private health provider, one million dollars for wrongfully denying claims that were valid but, in the opinion of the insurer, were going to cost too much. Health Net paid a $20,000 bonus to the employee who unlawfully and immorally denied these claims.

The private insurance model is the wrong model, yet it is favored by Senator Gordon Smith on the federal level and by the Oregon legislature in Senate Bill 329.  I say to you, “No, No, 1,000 times No. That is the wrong model.”

I have been on the opposite side of insurance companies for my entire legal career and I can tell you that the for-profit insurance model is dedicated to accumulating as much as possible and paying as little as possible. That is not what we need for health insurance but that is the very model Jeff Merkley and Gordon Smith favor, and I say. “No.”

I believe that:

1. Any health care delivery system must be not-for-profit and run by the federal government on the national level and the State of Oregon on the local level.

2. Any system must allow the individual to choose his or her doctors and health professionals.

3. The system must increase the number of primary care physicians, pediatricians, and other health care professionals to deliver high-quality health services affordably, efficiently and equitably to the whole population. 

4. The system must integrate all health care services and adequately pay for the best medical professionals. Doctors tell me now that they lose money on every Medicare patient. That is not a fair system.

5. Finally, we must emphasize preventive care and promote healthy life styles in nutrition, exercise, check-ups and prenatal care. We must reinstate physical education in our schools along with classes in healthy living. Childhood obesity is an epidemic that will challenge any health care system and must be addressed immediately. 

As your Senator, I will work tirelessly for a universal single payer system in the United States. That simply means that we take the health care system out of the hands of for-profit companies that now spend approximately one-third of the total health care costs on administration, salaries and advertising. That’s one-third of 2.2 trillion dollars. We spend twice what Germany, Canada and Australia spend, and we still have 47 million uninsured.

What will universal coverage cost? Less than we’re paying now. Today the average worker pays 24% of the cost of health insurance premiums. A payroll tax on all employers and employees would be far less than that, plus we wouldn’t have to pay deductibles or premiums. Efficiencies in the system would result in a far lower cost to the individual along with the comfort of knowing that when you go to the doctor, you just present your card and you’re covered. Any additional cost could be covered by a one-tenth of one percent tax on stock and bond transfers and repealing the tax cuts for the super rich that the Bush-Cheney administration has embraced.

The grim reality is that Oregonians know that health care costs will continue to rise if we don’t change the private for-profit insurance company system.  I want to distinguish myself from Senator Smith on this issue. In July of 2006, he suggested an incremental, voluntary policy that would give public subsidies to private insurers. Wrong. Wrong. To continue to help big business but give the impression you are doing something by tweaking the status quo is not the leadership Oregon needs.

Now let’s look at the state of Oregon and the work of the 2007 legislature. Its members, led by Jeff Merkley, passed Senate Bill 329. It again uses the discredited, inefficient, and expensive private insurance model. If they had bothered to fund it, it would cost Oregon taxpayers one billion dollars. It is so complex, it requires an accountant, an actuary, and a seer to understand what is intended. 

But what is most disturbing about Senate Bill 329 is that while it purports to embrace public input, Speaker Merkley failed even to respond to a letter from elected officials representing over a million Oregonians requesting that the legislature consider the Oregon Community Health Care Bill that is essentially a single payer system on the state level. That March 12, 2007 letter is available for your perusal. Speaker Merkley did not favor these Oregon leaders with a reply, nor did the legislature consider this sensible approach. Likewise, the efforts of the Archimedes Project, led by former Governor John Kitzhaber were disregarded.

What are the problems with Senate Bill 329 beyond its complexity and vagueness? First, we can’t control the cost of private insurance. I support union efforts to cover workers, and yet the cost of private health insurance has so skyrocketed that Multnomah County pays as much as $1,459 per month to many of its employees. We taxpayers can’t afford this, the Counties can’t afford it, and the workers certainly can’t shoulder those costs themselves. The result is more and more employers, both public and private are opting out of insurance. Senate Bill 329 will not fix this.

Senate Bill 329, with its private health insurance model, will not encourage preventive care that we need to promote healthy lives, and pre-existing conditions are left to be negotiated, so thousands can be denied.

We must demand that the Oregon legislature respond to its citizens‘ concerns. Here’s what I implore the Oregon legislature to do:  First, consider the recommendations of the Oregon Community Health Care Plan (the letter that Speaker Merkley refused to acknowledge). It is not based on a private health insurance model - the state would be the administrator; it emphasizes preventive care, it would save all public institutions and government employers 20% per year in premiums; it would provide uniform benefits for both public employees and private citizens, with no pre-existing exclusions. The legislature has an obligation to pursue the best, most efficient model for all Oregonians.

Second, the legislature should in its upcoming February session, amend SB 329 to allow consideration of the proposal of the Mid-Valley Health Advocates from Corvallis. It is the work of tireless advocates for health including many physicians and other health professionals. It, too, proposes a not for profit model.

Solutions to our health crisis are not easy - they are not facile - they are not susceptible to sound bites. But this we know: incremental change is not good enough; tinkering around the edges won’t fix the problem; pandering to big pharmaceuticals and big health care organizations is politics at its worst. We can fix this problem if we are strong, dedicated and courageous enough to do it.

So let us start today to act upon our conviction that all of us deserve the opportunity to be healthy. Let us put people before profit and equity before private advantage. Let us reject spin, deception, and fear mongering. Let us establish the values that we are willing to live by and then act upon our convictions. Health care is our inalienable right.