Denis C. Theriault/staff

Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson, D-Gresham, left, talks with Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, and Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, right, during the 2016 legislative session.

By Hillary Borrud

The Oregonian/OregonLive

Supporters of the drive to enshrine health care as a universal right in Oregon’s Constitution acknowledged on Monday that it is dead, at least for this legislative session.

Senate Democrats said they lacked the votes to advance the plan by a crucial Tuesday deadline to move it out of committee.

“The Senate doesn’t have a pathway to get this bill off of the floor,” said Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson, a Gresham Democrat and chair of the Senate Health Care Committee. “I’m heartbroken, but it’s how it turned out.”

Democrats in the Oregon House already passed House Joint Resolution 203 to send the health care proposal to the ballot earlier this month. They did so without securing a single Republican vote.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive

Sen. Elizabeth Steiner-Hayward, D-Portland.

Top Democrats have focused on expanding health care access, both through government programs and attempts to rein in private insurance costs. After they saw how heavily voters favored the Measure 101 taxes for health care, Democrats found the proposal to make health care a right a particularly tempting election year move.

In the end, questions about the potential cost to the state appear to have doomed the proposal this year. Those concerns were raised by people across the political spectrum, including from the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Oregon which often supports the progressive policies sought by Democrats.

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Stephanie Yao Long

Sen. Lee Beyer, D-Springfield, speaks on a 2017 panel about the bipartisan transportation bill and the lessons learned that can be applied to the state's budget crisis.

The referendum Democrats wanted to send to voters would simply have created a constitutional right to health care, without dedicating any money to expand the system. Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, a Beaverton Democrat and a chief cosponsor of the bill, said that could undercut supporters’ ability to win over voters.

“I would be even sadder if we put this forward and the voters said ‘no,’” Steiner Hayward said. “I think that would bind us even more and make it even harder for us to move forward with some proposed pathways” to expand health care.

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Stephanie Yao Long

Sen. Alan DeBoer, R-Ashland, in the Senate chamber during the 2017 session.

Sen. Lee Beyer, a Springfield Democrat, said he was “disappointed that we’re not moving forward with putting this out there, but I respect the decision that leadership has made.” Beyer was another chief sponsor of the bill and said Oregon should ultimately move to a single payer health system.

Sen. Alan DeBoer, a Republican from Ashland, said he also would like to have a single payer health care system. But he said the cost would be too great if Oregon attempted such an expansion without support from the federal government.

“I’m concerned that you send it to the voters and the voters say ‘yes’ … At what expense do we pay for it?” DeBoer asked. He said if health care became a constitutional right, people could sue the state to force the government to provide affordable health care.

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Stephanie Yao Long

Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland, shown in his Old Town/Chinatown Portland office.

Rep. Mitch Greenlick, a Portland Democrat, was the driving force behind the bill. He pointed out during the committee meeting Monday that it was the third time his proposal hit a dead-end in the Senate, failing even to pass out of committee.

“I trust our citizens of this state,” Greenlick told the Senate Health Care Committee, adding that the resolution was an attempt to ask voters what direction “we should move in as we try to deal with the problems in the health care system.”

-- Hillary Borrud; Twitter: @hborrud; 503-294-4034

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