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The state’s met again last month and is scheduled to meet again this month. It has until Sept. 15, 2026 to come up with a plan for the Legislature.

What we found intriguing was two Democratic legislators from Bend speaking frankly about the effort and poleaxing the idea.

It’s not that they don’t want everybody to have health care. State Rep. Emerson Levy, D-Bend, does not believe it would work financially. State Rep. Jason Kropf, D-Bend, speaking at the same event of the Bend Chamber, said it was more of an ambition to do better.

“Single payer in Oregon is not financially possible,� Levy said. “It is probably not popular to say. But it is the truth. The only way that we can have any type of single payer system is if we teamed up with maybe four or five other states and it would probably even have to include California. And like why is that? Because our risk pool is too small and it’s too sick. And if we did it, other people would move here. We have data that supports that. People moved to Colorado because their disability services for kids are excellent. That’s what people do when they are desperate. And I don’t think that is wrong.… I think on a federal level it could work, but on a state only – we do not have the administrative we do not have the risk…. I wish there was a magic bullet, but that’s the reality of how risk works. Our pool is too small. It’s too sick.�

Kropf made a similar argument.

“I think those conversations are aspirational and not reality,� he said. “And I share in those aspirations in this respect: I want everybody to have access to health care. I want investments in preventative health care. I want to see less people going to the emergency room. I don’t think they are necessarily reality conversations for a lot of the reasons Emerson made out.�

There are people that believe it could work. A state task force — a kind of predecessor to the Universal Health Plan Governance Board — . It believed such a system could save overall costs by about $980 million in year one. That was for a 2026 implementation.

The savings were argued to come from simplification, reduction in administrative costs and things such as whacking out insurance margins and increases in purchasing power.

One vision was to have all the health care premiums go away and have the new system paid for by new payroll taxes on employee wages of maybe around 7% to 10%. The task force discussed a health care income tax of up to 8% on income above 200% of the federal poverty level.

The challenge was always going to be getting Oregonians to believe it would work, that Oregonians would welcome the new tax scheme, that they wouldn’t mind much putting people in the insurance industry out of work; that Oregonians would believe state employees could run the system well, that Oregonians would welcome the government having more control; that the savings would be real and more.

We would add to that list now convincing Levy and Kropf.

You can follow what Oregon’s Universal Health Plan Governance Board is doing here: .