By Janie Har
The Oregonian
November 7, 2007
After the most expensive political campaign in Oregon history, voters Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a tobacco tax increase to pay for children’s health care.
The 3-to-2 vote against Measure 50, which would have increased Oregon’s cigarette tax by 85 cents a pack, follows similar defeats in California and Missouri after tobacco makers spent millions to oppose the measures.
In Oregon, Reynolds American and Philip Morris, the makers of Camel and Marlboro cigarettes, spent a record $12 million, primarily on a TV commercial blitz.
The decisive failure kicks a complex public health issue back to the Legislature and Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who have been unable to make health care more accessible for an estimated 576,000 Oregonians who lack insurance.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1194420305233310.xml&coll=7
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
What is it that we keep hearing?
“Only incremental steps can get us to comprehensive reform.”
“Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good.”
“Everyone’s second choice for reform is the status quo.”
“We don’t need a government system. We need to build on what is working.”
Because of perceptions of lack of political feasibility, we continue to reject comprehensive reform and instead direct our efforts to supporting measures that we believe are actually doable.
This measure couldn’t fail. Everyone supports health care for children, and almost everyone supports tobacco taxes that would give smokers a greater incentive to quit. Only the evildoers in the tobacco industry would be opposed.
Well, people in Oregon watch TV, and the vested interests with a lot of money control the message. The tobacco companies were able to frame this as an issue over taxes and government accountability. Who believes that we need more taxes? Who supports the ubiquitous inefficiencies of government bureaucracies?
Our goal is affordable, comprehensive, high-quality care for everyone. The vested interests that stand to lose will always be opposed. But they will also vigorously oppose the “politically feasible” incremental measures that do not serve their interests.
Don’t dilute our message. Continue to speak up loud and clear in support of the comprehensive reform that we need. But reject the self-serving framing of the opponents and use our moral framing of EMPATHY and RESPONSIBILITY for us to see that the health care needs of all of us are met.