By Jackie N. and Gabriel E.
The collapse of the Providence Health Plan and silence from Oregon’s Democratic Party leadership points the way for socialists to secure single-payer healthcare in 2027.
Oregon’s corporate healthcare industry delivered twin blows to patients this month as Providence and the Legacy-backed PacificSource health plan announced they would exit large parts of the Oregon health insurance market.
Providence’s Health Plan implosion is particularly grave, since over 400,000 Oregonians (about 10% of the population) depend on Providence coverage through the market, Oregon Health Plan, or the public employee benefits board.
This abdication by the corporate health insurance monopolies is a feature — not a bug — of the for-profit multi-payer health care system, where private corporations can drop us on a whim from their rolls, in pursuit of profit.
Health care policy expert and socialist Timothy Faust said it exactly right in his 2019 book, Health Justice Now: Single Payer and What Comes Next:
“The market won’t solve this; the market caused this.”
Thankfully, we don’t have to subordinate our health to the cruel logic of the market anymore. In 2027, Oregon legislators will vote on a universal single-payer health plan. Every Oregonian in, and nobody left out.
In the meantime, Oregon’s political class seems largely disinterested in the crisis. The Oregon Health Authority homepage offers no guidance to soon-to-be-former Providence patients and Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has said nothing about it, despite ample opportunities to discuss the issue during her bid for reelection.
Kotek’s campaign website doesn’t mention the health care crisis at all, save for specific claims about mental health:
The Governor’s silence is particularly odd, since she told reporters last week that her general election campaign will focus on fighting President Trump. But Kotek’s campaign literature doesn’t mention fighting the key achievement of the second Trump presidency, the One Big Beautiful Bill (H.R. 1), which will cut $15 billion in federal health care funding for Oregon.
H.R. 1 will further devastate Oregon’s healthcare system, especially across rural Oregon. That’s why Health Care for All Oregon and allied groups will organize seven events in seven days to elevate these atrocities, culminating in a rally at 3 PM on June 7 at Dawson Park. Head to Hcao.org/sevendays for details.
Back home, we shouldn’t expect meaningful leadership from the Democratic Party bosses, and a single-payer victory is not secure unless we mobilize a bottom-up movement to force their hand in 2028.
If Oregon’s Democratic Party leadership prefers to forget about their constituents’ health care troubles, it may reflect the hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions shelled out to them by the hospital and health insurance lobbies over their careers.
We don’t yet know how the hospital and insurance lobbies will react to the single-payer plan when it goes up for legislative review in 2027, but they both opposed the 2023 legislation that required policymakers to develop the plan in the first place.
Since 2025, the Oregon Hospital Political Action Committee spent over $35,000 in failed attempts to elect Ashley Hartmeier-Prigg to the statehouse for Beaverton and defend Janeen Sollman (Hillsboro). Both Hartmeier-Prigg and Sollman parrot the tired centrist rhetoric championing “access to affordable healthcare” without committing to universal single-payer healthcare.
That’s a stark contrast to the full-throated commitment of DSA-backed Dr. Tammy Carpenter, whose public support for single-payer played a role in her victory over the hospital-association favorite, Hartmeier-Prigg.
Dr. Carpenter’s victory in House District 27 (Beaverton) marks the third DSA-endorsed state legislator in Salem, where she joins State Rep Farrah Chaichi (Aloha) and State Rep Lesly Munoz (Woodburn).
Together with three other DSA members already in or likely to join the legislature come November, our socialist legislators could form a sizable bloc amplifying popular demands to pass a strong single-payer plan in 2027.
Of course, socialist legislators can’t secure a victory for single-payer health care in 2027 without us. Portland DSA’s Care Corps and Health Care for All Oregon are working together to generate real grassroots pressure on the Democrats, who boast a supermajority in the Oregon legislature.
Jackie N. is a union nurse and a member of Portland DSA and Health Care for All Oregon.
Gabriel E. is a healthcare union organizer and a member of Portland DSA.
(Note: The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of HCAO, which does not endorse candidates for office.)