The MitchMessage
June 17, 2007
I felt drained as I sat watching the thirty seconds tick away on the
House vote tally board waiting for the final count on HJR 18.
House Joint Resolution 18 is the bill to refer to the voters a
constitutional amendment declaring that access to health care is a
fundamental right of every legal resident of Oregon. HJR 18 is
a referral version of the initiative measure (#40) we worked
so hard to get to the ballot last year. This bill is, by far,
the most important to me of all the bills I have ever
sponsored.
The bill drew a ferocious debate, even though it was clear that I
had the votes to pass it. The Republican side of the debate
was spearheaded by three members of my House Committee on Health
Care, each of whom had voted against the measure in committee.
The debate went off in strange directions, beginning with a motion
by Rep. Dennis Richardson to return the bill to committee for an
amendment that would include food and shelter to the statement of
rights. I could have supported that concept were it not
completely disingenuous. That motion was defeated. The
debate then went off into wilder flights of fancy, including claims
that by sending the question to the people we would create a
socialist, communist, or totalitarian state.
The House has quaint debating rules, aimed at keeping debate on a
calm plane. Allowed in those rules is the right of a
representative to ask a question of the carrier of the measure, or
anybody else for that matter. The opponents used that
technique to ask ridiculous questions and I yielded to those
questions from the first three speakers. When it became clear
to me that the questions were mostly being used to stall the debate
I refused to yield to questions from the fourth speaker, much to his
surprise.
One of the flights of fancy of an opponent led him to quote the
preamble to the United States Constitution, with regard to our
god-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. That became the theme to my closing statement, with
my assertion that a 21st Century American can not
exercise the right to life without have access to health care
services. I finished with a statement that I wouldn’t be
standing in that chamber without having access to health care during
the last two years, nor would many other members of the body, whose
access to health care had kept them alive to take part in this
debate. The final vote tally was 32-27, with all the Democrats
and one Republican (cosponsor Rep. Bob Jensen) voting yes. The
bill now goes to the Senate.
The debate on HJR 18 kicked
off a very interesting morning, also highlighted by a debate on SB
571, which requires that employers provide smoke-free worksites,
including restaurants, bars, and taverns. This included a vote
on a minority report that would have allowed smoking at Portland
Meadows and delayed the effective date for bingo halls. After
a great deal of debate the minority report was defeated. The
main bill was ultimately passed on a 38-21 vote with all Democrats
and seven Republicans voting yes. The debate on the two bills
took up almost all of the morning and ended just at noon. The
timing was important because two members of the majority needed to
leave the chamber around noon. One of the two was Rep. Ben
Cannon, who came in for these two votes. Rep. Cannon and his
wife Liz were busy dealing with the birth of their first child for a
large part of the week. The second member was ill and was
hanging in for these important votes before leaving for a
sickbed.
We had action on several
health care bills during this period, including one more fruitless
try to pass the Healthy Kids bill that would finance health care for
children on the basis of an increase of the tax on cigarettes.
This was an attempt to pass HB 2967, which is a statuary referral to
the voters. The cigarette tax increase in the measure would
provide sufficient money to buy health insurance for all poor kids,
for the Tobacco Use Reduction program, and for several other health
care programs. The debate on the bill was preceded by several
weeks of negotiations between the Democratic and the Republican
leadership. That led to the apparent likelihood that the
Republicans would provide the five votes, that when added to the 31
Democratic votes, would be the 36 votes needed to pass the bill. Any
bill that raises taxes needs a 3/5 majority of each house to
pass. However, the legislative counsel has asserted that a
referral that asks the voters to raise taxes also requires 3/5
majority. This is not true in the case of a constitutional
amendment referral.
Of course, as I expected, the
Republicans had no intention of providing the votes necessary to
pass the bill. On the first day of debate, the bill only
gained 35 votes. There was a move for reconsideration and on
the second day, two Republicans dropped off the bill and two
Republicans joined the bill. Again 35 votes. It was
clear that as many times as the bill was debated the Republicans
would provide enough votes to get to 35. In fact, rumor had it
that we gained one vote at the last moment and had 36 votes.
But as soon as that happened a Republican member, who had assured
the Speaker he would be a yes vote 15 minutes before the vote,
became a no vote. However, the battle isn’t over. The
Senate is moving to the House a constitutional amendment to
implement the cigarette tax increase and the Health Kids
program. Since that only takes 31 votes to pass, I expect that
several Republicans will jump on the bill now that it doesn’t
matter.
Another bruising political
fight came over the passage of HB 3540, a bill to refer to the
voters a fix needed to effectively implement Measure 37. This
bill finally emerged from a bipartisan committee on a pure
party-line vote after weeks of negotiation failed to craft a
bipartisan compromise. It seemed that at three different times
a compromise had emerged, only to have hopes crushed when the
Republican members checked with their caucus. The measure
passed in the House. The Senate added some amendments.
This week the House concurred in the Senate amendments and the
modification of Measure 37 will now go to the voters. Almost
all of the key votes were strictly party-line votes.
Some of the readers of the
MitchMessage suggest that I sometimes sound too partisan in my
reporting on doings in the House. But after bruising fights
that seem as if they are only political, and not policy-oriented,
such as the debates I discuss above, it is hard not to feel like the
tough issues usually turn into a win-lose battle and much of the
tactics are related to the next election campaign and not related to
the issues at hand.
On the other hand, I
frequently don’t report in the MitchMessage on the dozens of bills
that passed over the last two weeks that weren’t the least bit
political and were simply technical bills or bills that were
perfected in committee. One absolutely critical matter that
could have turned political, but didn’t, relates to the provider
taxes used to fund what is left on the Oregon Health Plan.
This week we passed, without dissent, HB 3057. This measure
renews the sunset on taxes on hospitals, nursing homes, and managed
care plans that support care for 24,000 Oregonians who are a part of
OHP standard. What makes these taxes different is that the
institutions taxed all agree on the system, which provides matching
funds to get Federal Medicaid money for services. The effect
of the taxes, generally speaking, is for the institutions to pay
$1.00 in taxes and get $1.60 returned to pay for services
rendered.
We passed a bill (SB 863)
limiting, although not eliminating, robocalls. It had
universal support in the House. We passed several important
health care bills, such as one (SB 656) clarifying how optometrists
may treat glaucoma. There were some important health insurance
bills, such as our concurrence on HB 2214 requiring transparency
about the amount people will be charged for co-payments when they
receive services and SB 8 requiring health insurance plans covering
chemo-therapy to cover oral chemo-therapy agents. And we moved
SB 191, which includes some important reforms in the long-term care
insurance market. None of these turned partisan.
And we passed important
land-use measures and some key education bills, including the best
pre-K and the best K-12 budget we have had since I joined the
House. It felt good to be able to vote for education budgets
and feel we had done good. I’m afraid I won’t have that same
feeling about the higher education budget and expect I will vote
against that budget. Although an important difference in being
in the majority is that you have to take more responsibility for the
budget process. In the minority I could vote against any
budget I felt was inadequate. In the majority I might need to
provide the 31st vote for budgets that have been crafted
by the Ways and Means process, even if I think the budgets are
inadequate. More later on that issue.
The Health Care Committee
struggled with several very difficult bills concerning professional
licensing boards, such as the Board of Medical Examiners. It
is my intention to spend some of the interim dealing with how these
boards balance their obligation to protect the public with their
need to protect individual professionals. This is not an easy
balance. Last week the Portland Tribune published a
story by Peter Korn, indicating a significant failure of the nursing
licensing board to protect the public. I have gotten approval
from the Speaker to reopen the Health Care Committee for an
informational hearing on that situation, as the first step in
examining how all of the health professional licensing boards do
their difficult job.
I think we really will be
done by June 29. That should make these next two weeks very
exciting. Keep in touch.
Mitch