Finance committee February 2025 update
The Finance and Revenue Committee of the UHPGB met for the seventh time on Feb 4, 2025.
T Summary by Sandra Coyner, HCAO/HCAO-Action (SandraCoyner@hcao.org)
The committee is continuing its work to create a reasonably accurate estimate of current expenditures on health care for all Oregonians. This task is incredibly much more difficult than anybody could have anticipated, since data must be collected from a number of sources and then brought into comparability, often with estimates and extrapolations--currently looking like almost $60 billion per year for the state. The Committee is preparing a straw proposal (really more of a report) as requested by the Board, on how it is calculating costs. Estimating current costs will continue.
These data are necessary for the committee to eventually say how much revenue will be needed from new sources, assuming that many current funding streams such as Medicaid and Medicare stay intact. The committee also continues to gather information about what sources might provide this revenue, having previously begun investigating various taxes that might replace insurance premiums and copays, including income, payroll, sales, excise, property, kicker, and others. Also discussed the types of consultants needed to get additional needed revenue information and how to get this expertise paid for within the UHPGB budget.
Critical discussions of values and feasibility will come after the numbers and the legalities are understood better. The F&R committee will work with Plan Design and Operations committees to know how much money will be required for the universal program, and with Communication and Community Engagement to understand how the public will be responding to its ideas.
[The first meeting of the governing board was April 16, 2024.]
[Committees began meeting in fall 2024, either in October, November, or December]
