Oregon’s 2027 Legislative Preview: Universal Healthcare

 All information on Oregon’s plan for universal healthcare is on this website:

Universal Health Plan Governance Board

Universal Health Plan Governance Board

The Legislature created the Universal Health Plan Governance Board in 2023 (Senate Bill 1089) to design a publicly funded health care system for Oregon, building on the earlier Joint Task Force on Universal Health Care (Senate Bill 770, 2019). The board is charged with:

• Designing models for a publicly funded health plan covering everyone who lives in Oregon.
• Planning how the plan would be run, how to pay for it, and how it would work statewide.
• Getting input from people living in Oregon, such as health care users, providers, employers, insurers, tribes, and community leaders, as dictated by statute.
• Delivering final recommendations to the Legislature for consideration in 2027.

This work is guided by technical analysis, legal review, economic modeling, and broad public input.

The board has nine members, appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Oregon Senate. At least five bring expertise in health care delivery, finance, or administration, and four represent community perspectives. By law, at least one member must have personal experience with barriers to care, ensuring that lived experience informs decisions.

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A consultant’s report completed in April 2026 is available to read online. 

The report makes clear that Oregon’s Universal Health Plan depends upon one thing:   

          provider capacity to deal with increased demand.  

The consultant states this in multiple places, mostly toward the end of the report.  The level of Provider reimbursements is the key determinant for retaining and attracting skilled healthcare personnel and keeping facilities operating at a high level.  GOVERNMENT does not solve problems, it creates new ones.   

A lot of Oregon’s doctors are currently deciding not to treat Medicare patients anymore and many doctors have left the state.  Wait times to see a doctor is up while the number of primary care physicians is down.  

The Milliman Report lays bare the facts that Oregon’s plan will make things worse for all and is doomed even before it is implemented.  Will that stop Democrat politicians from approving it?  Heck no!  Agenda over logic now and always.  Willful ignorance is alive and well in Salem.

How well does Oregon’s Medicaid program work?

 Not well at all.  

According to the Paragon Health Institute’s new study, Oregon ranks 6th worse in its abuse of the federal Medicaid program through enrollment of ineligible Medicaid recipients.

Next year Oregon hopes to begin its Universal Healthcare program - promising healthcare for all residents regardless of legal status.  Guaranteed healthcare for all becomes a pull for illegal aliens and those from other not-so-generous states to move here. If Medicaid funds are adjusted to their legal limits, Oregon taxpayers will bear the cost of healthcare for ALL.  This is not sustainable.  Our government provides a safety net for all, but not everyone belongs in the net; 

If you were a doctor, would you choose Oregon as a place to work?

Paragon Institute Report on Medicaid Expansion

Medicaid Expansion’s Growing Improper Enrollment Crisis

Nearly Half of Expansion Enrollees Likely Do Not Meet Eligibility Requirements

Excerpt:  (emphasis mine)

Improper enrollment is a nationwide problem, but a handful of states drive a disproportionate share. California alone accounts for roughly 3.1 million improper enrollees—about one-third of the national total—with an estimated ineligible rate of 62 percent. I also find substantial levels of improper enrollment in New York, Louisiana, Oregon, and Washington. Yet the deterioration is broad-based: Of the 32 states that had expanded Medicaid before 2019, improper enrollment increased in 31, and 36 of the 41 expansion states (including the District of Columbia) show detectable improper enrollment in 2024.

These patterns are consistent with the structural incentives facing states. Because the federal government pays at least 90 percent of expansion costs—far above the roughly 60 percent average match for traditional enrollees—states bear almost none of the cost of improper expansion enrollment while reaping the political—and potentially economic—benefits of higher enrollment and more federal funding. The post-pandemic unwinding illustrates the consequences: By mid-2025, traditional Medicaid enrollment had returned close to pre-pandemic levels, but expansion enrollment remained 21 percent above its January 2020 level. The COVID-era enrollment surge in the expansion group, in other words, never reversed.

Improper enrollment is not a victimless accounting problem. It diverts resources from the vulnerable populations Medicaid was designed to serve—children, pregnant women, the elderly, and people with disabilities—strains the health system, erodes public trust, and imposes tens of billions of dollars in improper costs on federal taxpayers each year.