Eugene weekly., January 11, 2018, Page 8, Image 8

B Y K E L LY K E N O Y E R
VOTE ‘YES’
ON 101
Hundreds of com-
munity organizations
support Measure 101
SEN. JAMES
MANNING
PHOTO: TRASK BEDORTHA
e’ve all seen the signs on lawns around
town asking for a "yes" vote on Measure
101, but just what that measure is can be a
little confusing.
In July 2017, Gov. Kate Brown signed a
bill into law that would continue providing health care for
one million Oregonians through the Oregon Health Plan as
part of the overall state budget.
House Bill 2391 created a 1.5 percent assessment on
insurance companies and the Public Employees’ Benefit
Board and a 0.7 percent assessment on profits from hos-
pitals that would continue to fund the Medicaid expansion
for one in four Oregonians on OHP.
Following the passage of HB 2391, three Republican
legislators launched a petition drive that led to Ballot Mea-
sure 101 in an effort to get voters to repeal the assessments
that were signed into law back in July.
W
get gap that would need to be filled in the upcoming short
legislative session.
At a Jan. 4 town hall on Measure 101, Rep. Julie Fa-
hey and Sen. James Manning answered questions about the
measure and provided a platform for citizens to discuss it.
Fahey said the assessment “is used in 49 other states
and the district of Columbia, so it’s not a new way of fund-
ing Medicaid.”
Fahey supports Measure 101 and says she hopes it pass-
es so she can focus on other legislative goals in the upcom-
ing short session instead of scrambling to fill a budget gap
that HB 2391 was already meant to fill.
Fahey said of HB 2391, “The Oregonian’s editorial
about Measure 101 said the Legislature should have come
up with a solution to fix this — we did!” A “yes” vote sim-
ply reiterates the previous actions of the legislature to fill
the budget gap and maintain health care coverage for a mil-
proved, and it never had to come up for a vote. This is a
total waste of time for all of us to even have to deal with all
of this,” Manning added.
Rep. Julie Parrish of Tualatin is the “Measure 101 chief
petitioner to Stop Healthcare Taxes on public schools,
college students, small businesses, and everyday Orego-
nians,” according to the Voters' Pamphlet. That means that
she led the push to bring Measure 101 on the ballot, and
she seeks a “no” vote on the measure.
Parrish says, “The crux of 101 is not whether we should
fund Medicaid, it’s how we should fund Medicaid.”
Parrish calls the pieces of HB 2391 in Measure 101 “the
most unfair, inequitable and unsustainable way of funding
Medicaid.”
Parrish says that the assessment on hospitals and in-
surers “targets people who are struggling to pay for their
own health care, people who are seeing double-digit rate
‘It’s not going to cost us anything. It was already approved,
and it never had to come up for a vote. This is a total waste of
time for all of us to even have to deal with all of this.’
— SEN. JAMES MANNING
So in the upcoming Jan. 23 special election, a “yes”
vote on Measure 101 would confirm HB 2391, keeping the
assessments on hospitals and insurers and creating about
$210 million to $320 million in revenue to fund Medic-
aid. When matched by $840 million in federal dollars that
means $1.3 billion in total revenue to the state.
A “no” vote repeals those assessments, leaving a bud-
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January 11, 2018 • eugeneweekly.com
lion Oregonians, according to Fahey and Manning.
At the Junction City town hall, Manning seemed simi-
larly exasperated about this measure’s coming to a vote.
“Voting ‘yes’ just agrees with what had already been
done,” he said. “Everyone had approved it, bipartisan, the
hospitals, everyone!”
“It’s not going to cost us anything. It was already ap-
increases year over year for the past several years.”
Yes for Healthcare, one of the main committees behind
the yes campaign, appears to have many large contribu-
tions from health care groups, including Kaiser Perman-
ente, Providence Health and Services, CareOregon and
PeaceHealth. Some of the top donors to the Yes for Health-
care campaign include Willamette Valley Community