Oregonians appalled by the Republican Party’s proposed legislation to gut Obamacare and replace it with reduced coverage that will leave as many as 15 million people without insurance have been forced to face an additional galling fact: that one of their own is central to this effort to screw over millions of Americans. Representative Greg Walden, chairman of the House Commerce and Energy Committee that is helping draft and approve the legislation, is a central figure in pushing this legislation through — despite the fact that in his eastern Oregon district, more than a third of the population is on Medicaid.
As this New York Times piece about his role notes, “[Walden] must reconcile the political goals of his party, which is committed to repealing the 2010 health law, and the interests of his state, where officials say the law has been a big success. In 2010, nearly one in five Oregonians lacked health coverage. Today, state officials say, 95 percent of Oregonians have coverage.”
The real humdinger here is that in supporting the Republican health care legislation, Walden is not at all reconciling two competing political goals — he’s embracing one, and disregarding the other. Oregon has achieved that 95% figure in part through the mechanisms of Obamacare, including Medicaid expansions, which according to the Times cover nearly one-fourth of Oregon’s population. But under the proposed legislation, instead of the federal government covering 95% of Medicaid costs, it will only cover 65% of them starting in 2020. For some perspective, Oregon’s current 5% contribution, which kicked in this year and costs $350 million, is already causing budget headaches for the state. A 35% contribution would run the state's share into the billions. What has been a great and indeed live-saving deal for thousands of Oregonians, and for the state, paid for through taxes on the richest citizens of our country, will now become a crippling financial burden for Oregon, and likely will mean many of those people will either no longer receive coverage, or no longer have coverage remotely comparable to what they have now. And this is on top of the non-Medicaid cuts to subsidies that are also planned, which will impact thousands of additional people. Walden is playing the good soldier for the Republican team, but at the price of screwing over literally hundreds of thousands of Oregonians.
Walden seems well-regarded by his fellow Oregon representatives, and perhaps they know something we don’t about his willingness to protect the state from Republicans’ vengeful and ill-conceived attempt to do away with Obamacare, which though far from perfect has expanded coverage to at least 20 million additional Americans. And Walden’s constituents have every right to be represented by him — he was reelected by 72% of voters in 2016, and he's served in Congress for sixteen years now. However, the larger Oregon population equally has a right to defend its own interests against this Republican representative who has defied state interests for the sake of party. In some ways, I have to confess that it feels somewhat pointless to write about this, as clearly the Democrats have written off the possibility of ever capturing Walden’s district. But his role in upending Obamacare, and in carrying poison water for the deranged and erratic Donald Trump, needs to be highlighted. No one should ever get a pass for fucking with Oregon, no matter how large their margin of victory.