The latest revenue-generating scheme for financing the state government's efforts to provide medical insurance to all Oregonians is exactly what it isn't supposed to be, writes Cascade Policy Institute's Steve Buckstein in today's Salem Statesman Journal: inequitable, narrowly based and of questionable affordability.

"Here in Oregon, our Legislature passed a bill in the 2007 session that created an Oregon Health Fund Board charged with proposing a universal health care system to the 2009 legislature," said Buckstein. "The bill (SB329) set out a number of principles for a new health care system. One key principle states: 'Financing of the health care system must be equitable, broadly based and affordable.'"

The pitches from the funding board's executive director -- an insurance premium tax, a hospital tax and a tobacco tax -- run counter to those principles. Buckstein explains why those ideas are strikeouts:

Taxing the premiums of those who are fortunate enough to have insurance is a way to make insurance even less affordable than it is today. Taxing hospitals is simply a way to shift the burden to patients who are unlucky enough to need their services. And, taxing tobacco is the least equitable, narrowly based, unaffordable way to make a minority pay for the health care of others. Oregonians soundly defeated the tobacco tax idea when they voted down Measure 50 last year. If voters won't tax smokers to pay for children's health insurance, why would they want to tax smokers to pay for anyone else's insurance?