Tom’s Tidbits- We’re stepping up on Single Payer

June 5, 2026

Greetings,

We were privileged to be a sponsor of Health Care for All Oregon’s annual conference last weekend, so we got to meet hundreds of the people working to bring Single Payer healthcare to our Beaver State. For a conference on health care policy it was a surprisingly exhilarating event.

America’s healthcare system is one of the biggest failures in a country that can and should do much better. Like sheep lining up for shearing, Americans submissively send hundreds or even thousands of dollars every month to corporations that do NOTHING to make us healthier. Here in the Land of the Free over half a million people file for medical bankruptcy each year, accounting for 66% of all personal bankruptcies. By that standard alone the whole system is a failure, but there are many others.

Estimates vary, but the Rand Corporation says the average American pays 19.8-33.9% of their income to health insurance (not health care), with the highest percent being paid by the lowest income quintile. That’s a crippling burden to anyone. Or, take a look at the drag on businesses… money we spend on health insurance for our employees is money we could spend on higher wages, new equipment, business expansion, or even lowering our prices to you. And we’re an established business, not some startup. Can you imagine how many “next great thing” entrepreneurs are held back because they can’t put their family’s health care on hold for a few years while they get off the ground? And there’s the load on actual healthcare providers to have entire departments dedicated to insurance billing, or the worse health outcomes as people delay care or skip medicines, and then there’s the “death panels” of insurance shills deciding what care you qualify for, and don’t forget the fraud… and the list goes on.

If private health insurance makes no sense for the humans it cynically purports to serve, it does make sense for one group… the health insurance industry. The $173 million it spent on lobbying in 2025 is a jawbreaker at first glance, but that’s a pittance to protect the $71.3 BILLION (and growing) it pockets in JUST ONE YEAR. Money well spent, if only from their point of view and not ours.

In the face of this bleak reality, what could possibly be exhilarating about a health care conference? Hope. The Joint Task Force on Universal Health Care was created in 2019 to design a publicly funded, single-payer, universal health care system in Oregon. They researched the system and took comment from around the State, completing their report in 2022. The Universal Health Plan Governance Board took the Task Force report to formalize recommendations to the Oregon Legislature later this year. There are three paths from there- unfortunately, the Legislature could ignore the whole thing, which would put signature gatherers in the streets for a ballot initiative in 2028. Alternatively, they could take the report seriously and put the issue in front of voters themselves in 2027 or 2028. Or, in the best possible world, the Legislature could turn the recommendations into law, vote on it, and we could have Single Payer in Oregon starting as soon as 2027.

Tom Dwyer Automotive has backed Single Payer for years but it’s too often felt like screaming into a void. Even we, advocates that we are, were only vaguely aware of the behind the scenes activity on the issue but last weekend we found out, and the rest of Oregon is about to find out too. Look, I’m no Pollyanna. Even under Single Payer there’d still be waste, fraud, and abuse, Americans would still be lazy and unhealthy lumps, and a bureaucratic nightmare is a bureaucratic nightmare no matter who administers it. Even without the cost of insurance, the cost of actual health care is rising faster than inflation and showing no signs of stopping. It’s expensive and has to be paid for. Single Payer wouldn’t solve any of these problems completely but it would be a step in the right direction, and a step that’s long overdue.

We, as a company, have consciously stepped back a little from the loud political stances we used to take. In these politically fraught times it’s unfair to the political diversity of our employees and can even be dangerous. But health care affects us all, because red, blue, or purple, we all get sick. As Oregon’s Single Payer plan moves into the spotlight we want to help it succeed so look to us for occasional editorials, articles of interest, updates, and a new Health Care for All Oregon (HCAO) information station in our lobby. Please join us in supporting not just the healthcare we need as Oregonians, but the common-sense and effective system we need as Americans.

Make a great day,