It helps to read a recent email sent by Our Oregon, the advocacy group for public employee unions, in the deep, dramatic voice of a movie-trailer narrator warning of the world's impending doom. The email, with the subject line "Evil," aims to build that same sense of danger, with President Donald Trump and Oregon Rep. Julie Parrish, R-West Linn sharing the spotlight as twin powers of malevolence.
"Friend," the email urges, "don't be fooled: The GOP isn't giving up their war against healthcare." The message then goes on to argue that "Rep. Julie Parrish and the rest of the Oregon GOP want to make sure Trump's rollbacks come to our state, even if Congressional Republicans fail to repeal the (Affordable Care Act). It's downright cruel, friend." The email then urges resistance to something it calls "the Trump-Parrish plan."
Our Oregon email sent on July 19.
Comparing someone to Trump is a popular way to discredit opponents these days. The problem with that comparison, however, is that Parrish's goals and actions are nothing like Trump's. The moderate Republican legislator, who herself depended on Medicaid as a child and whose first successful bill plugged a Medicaid coverage gap, is not seeking to roll back health care for low-income Oregonians.
She does object, however, to portions of a new $605 million package of taxes and assessments designed to fund Medicaid for the 2017-2019 biennium. Among a slate of revenue-generating tools, the plan calls for a 1.5 percent tax on the health care premiums paid by K-12 school districts, small businesses and thousands of college students - none of which are particularly known for being flush with cash. Parrish, along with two Republican colleagues, filed the paperwork to refer the premium tax and a few other elements of the overall package to voters.
Understandably, legislators and advocates who spent the session patching together a funding plan to cover Medicaid costs may be frustrated and worried about what will happen if the referendum qualifies for the ballot. They argue that the package of taxes, passed by Democrats with at least one Republican in each chamber, will help stabilize the overall market and ensure that the state can continue to cover approximately 350,000 Oregonians who rely on Medicaid.
But Parrish raises valid policy questions that other legislators gave short shrift in their panic to get a deal in the session's final weeks. Although the state has known for years that it would need to shoulder more of Medicaid's costs starting in 2017, they procrastinated until this session to find replacement funding. That gave little time for researching the plan's potential impacts. For example, the state Department of Consumer and Business Services, which oversees Oregon's health-insurance marketplace, couldn't even verify until the day before the Oregon House's vote that the plan would tax premiums for about 12,000 college students who buy coverage through their school. K-12 school districts also will be devoting more of their money to a tax on their employees' health premiums. Those are discussions that merited far more consideration than they received. But this is the price Oregonians pay for a Legislature that ignores known problems until they hit crisis proportions.
The 1.5 percent premium tax isn't the only provision the referendum backers target as unfair, ineffective or bad policy. And if it goes to the ballot, who knows how tax-weary voters will lean. But it is misleading to claim that Parrish is seeking a health care repeal when her questions simply focus on how it is funded. It also ignores that Oregon, with Democrats in charge of the house, senate and governor's office, looks nothing like the Republican-controlled Congress and presidency. It's almost as if Democrats have forgotten that they are the ones who can call the shots here - so much so that they not only passed the plan, but they passed another bill designed to disadvantage the referendum if it qualifies.
Voters may turn back Parrish's efforts and decide that the overall plan is a necessary price to pay for expanded Medicaid coverage. But they should not allow themselves to be hypnotized into mindless opposition by the mere mention of Trump's name. Facts matter, especially in high-stakes issues as health care, and there are precious few of them in the anti-Parrish campaign.
The Oregonian/OregonLive Editorial Board
Oregonian editorials
Editorials reflect the collective opinion of The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board, which operates independently of the newsroom.
Members of the editorial board are Laura Gunderson, Helen Jung, Mark Katches and John Maher.
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