Hospital Cash Gets Spread Around Oregon—and Helps a Tax Measure That Hurts Hospitals

You know the saying about politics and strange bedfellows. But election season can make for loose pocketbooks, as groups that normally conflict pool their resources to promote shared interests—sometimes at their own expense.

Money shared between a couple of the many tax measures on this year's ballot highlights the compromises that come with volunteering to pick up the tab.

1. On the last day of the 2019 session of the Oregon Legislature, Democrats, with strong support from public employee unions, refer a $2-a-pack cigarette tax increase to the ballot.

2. Between referral in 2019 and now, Oregon hospitals and health systems poured $13 million into passing Measure 108, the cigarette tax hike. Their sometimes nemesis, Service Employees International Union, contributes another $250,000 to the campaign. (SEIU represents many hospital workers.) The measure will produce $165 million a year in new tax money, most of which will eventually go to healthcare and fund some SEIU jobs. "We are always willing to work with folks that are willing to work with us to get people the health care they need," says SEIU Local 503 executive director Melissa Unger.

3. Meanwhile, regional government Metro puts a $4 billion transportation measure on the ballot, funded by a payroll tax. Among the largest groups that would pay that tax? Hospitals who employ tens of thousands of health care workers in the region and would pay millions in taxes every year if it passes. It might seem logical for them to oppose it. They haven't.

4. Big Tobacco, which was expected to fund opposition to Measure 108's hike on cigarette taxes, decides to sit the race out. That leaves the Yes on 108 campaign with millions of dollars and little to spend it on. So the campaign contributes $250,000 to Our Oregon, the union-backed group that produces a voter guide encouraging voters to support both the tobacco tax and the Metro measure.

5. The result? The hospitals indirectly support a measure that would hurt them. "Our top electoral priority this year is the passage of Measure 108, which will reduce vaping and tobacco use while providing valuable funding for the Oregon Health Plan," says Michael Cox, spokesman for the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems. "Yes for a Healthy Future has assembled a diverse coalition in support of Measure 108, and strategic decisions by the campaign are made as a coalition. Participation in the voter guide is an effective way to reach voters and is consistent with the campaign's winning strategy."