Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 10-10-25_FRIDAY_7AM

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Greg Roberts, Mr. Outdoors from Rogue Weather Dot com, Outdoor report, keeping it rainy and sporty for deer hunting, huh? State Rep. Ed Diehl is on promoting the coming tax repeal referendum, we talk the truth about the gov shutdown health tax stuff.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Dave, Sarah, Dave, you have a dad joke. I'd love to hear your dad joke. What's going on today, huh? Yeah, why does Altypha drink warm water? Okay, I don't know.

Why does Antifa drink warm water, Dave? They don't like ice. I'm going to remember that one. That's a dad joke that actually may be loved. life and laugh rather and not groan. I love that. Okay, Dave. Thanks with the call. Bye.

Yeah. By the way, he'll probably call me next year, next rather hour, and we'll talk about his pardon. The progress of his pardon with the Trump administration. It's actually in the works. Minor Dave, man, he's had to work on that for a while here. By the way, dad jokes, we're going to make that dad joke of the day. And that, of course, sponsored by two dogs fabricating. Two dogs fabricating.

It's on Brian Way off Sage Road in Medford. At Metal Fabrication, the Work and Dump trailers, truck, flatbeds, utility boxes, body swaps, roll-up doors, hydraulic repairs. They do it all, okay? Two DogsFab.com, you can also submit your dad joke. Eight minutes after seven, and coming up here, Mr. Outdoors, standing by, we're going to talk the weather, we're going to talk the deer, we're going to talk the Palisades, we're going to talk our fire, too. All the rest of it, coming up. An intelligent solution saves you money. This is Randall at Advanced Air.

There's Bill Meyer. Twelve minutes after seven, Mr. Outdoors joined the show, and we talk to him every Friday, talk about what's going on in the outdoors. And there's actually a lot going on in the outdoors today. Outdoor Report, sponsored by Oregon Truck and Auto Authority on Airway Drive in Mestford. And, of course, Greg Roberts at rogueweather.com. I was awakened at about 2.30, a big, big thunderstorm around my house here, Greg. And I didn't go back to sleep, unfortunately, so I'm a little blurry-eyed, but still, I'm loving the rain, loving that.

Got to tell you that. Yeah, the rain, the rain part of it is great. You know, and we knew the rain part of it would happen. It's just the lightning here in Jackson County. No, not so much. But we were watching the slow offshore, which actually about this time yesterday morning, noticed it was cranking off a lot of lightning. But it came in closer than any of the tracks it indicated.

So, you know, once again, weather is a living fluid thing, and, you know, we can make our predictions based off what we believe is going to happen, and we still have things happen not expected, which is why no weather forecaster in this part of the world is ever going to be 100%. And with what we've seen, with what we're watching right now, yeah, I think it's definitely. possible. Jackson, Josephine County, some stray rumbles of thunder today. We've got kind of a little bit of a clashing air mass situation, if you will. There is much colder air that is going to be coming in, especially tomorrow. And snow levels will be dropping as low as 5,000 feet in the Cascades. I don't think this turns into anything that impacts travel yet, but tomorrow we're, what, three weeks away from the start of the winter driving season on November 1st when, you know, studded tires will be legal for use up and down the West Coast.

And right now, the way things look, probably going to need those because yesterday morning it was declared officially, we are again in La Nina for the winter, and on the typical La Nina, that means cooler, wetter, slash snowier conditions. So, you know, things are already breaking and getting underway, making that transition into winter conditions, and that's really what we'll see this weekend. And if you're a deer hunter, which I am, this is actually excellent. news. So last weekend, especially on Sunday with the sunshine, much tougher hunting conditions. Oh, and the wind. And so, of course, in the midst of those tough hunting conditions, it was my buddy George Elmore, who put his tag on a three-point buck.

No kidding. And it was kind of funny. It was about the time we were thinking we had seen all the deer we were going to see for the day. We'd seen two does and a fawn. You know, just sitting there, and it was a freezing cold wind, too, by the way, and going, man, bright, sunny day, winds howling. We've got a full moon phase. Shoot, we may not see any more deer. And so we'd all just gotten back together, talked about our game plan, what we were going to do, starting to make our move to go check out a different spot, a little more shelter they might be in. going along all of a sudden, George is, oh, I just saw a deer back there. And I went, wait, what? He goes, yeah, well, let's go back and take a look, see if it's still there. And we go back and take a look.

It's still there, and I took one look at it, and I go, that's not a doe. So George has the better look and the better angle, and he got off a great shot and got to put his tag on a three-point on Sunday. So now it's up to the brother-in-law and I to go out and replicate that, but at least we are definitely going to be having good conditions for hunting in all day long tomorrow and Sunday. And I'm assuming the ruts on right now. They're doing that. No.

No? No, it's not. This is still way ahead of that. That's going to be probably, if we're lucky, the last week or so of the deer season, which ends in November, but no, we were up above 6,000 feet elevation. They're still up high. Okay. Now then, Greg Roberts with me this morning.

Scott, by the way, is here from Eagle Point. He said he was going to check in. I think that's you. Isn't that right, Scott? Yeah, say Bill. Hey, Greg. Yeah, so you wanted to do a quick crypto zoology update while we're added here on the weekend. Go ahead.

Yeah, you bet. You know, if it's really rainy and you don't want to get up in the woods. Go to the crater Rockies them. They have a great exhibit there, and they have a lot of fossils. One of the areas showed the progression of the human fossil schools, and boy, what a connection to the relic commonoids. What do you think about that, Greg? Yeah, and haven't been out there, I can attest to what you're talking about.

So, yeah, it's true, but you look at what they have displayed and then realize what we're talking about and is out there running around much different, much bigger. The overall shape of the skull is going to be different, you know, but yeah, if you think Crater Rock Museum is just totally all about rocks, no, you would be missing out. And they have, as Scott was talking about fossils, they've got some anthropological, meaning human-related things in there. So, yeah, Crater Rock Museum, if you've never been, or it's been a long time, especially if we catch a rainy day and you're looking for something to do indoors, yeah, highly recommend Crater Rock Museum getting in there. And I would also recommend that if you're looking for a new deer rifle or a different deer rifle, you head to the Metford Rifle and Pistol Club Gun Show. That's going to be Saturday and Sunday, too. And then you can go out hunting if you wanted to do that. For sure.

Now, Relicomid. Yes. Here's what happened on Sunday morning, though, that was very interesting. They're dropping me off to get my point where I'm going in and watching this trail system that we discovered. And I'm unloading my stuff, getting out of the rig, and about four to 500 yards. yards to the east looking down this road. I just happened to take a look down there and just in time to see something come off the side of the road, get in the middle of the road, I think picked up on us, turned around and went right back the way it came, and what I saw definitely looked upright

and on two legs. The brother-in-law saw motion in the road. He just wasn't 100% sure. what he saw. And I'm just like, oh, man, did I just see what I thought I saw? And the brother-in-law's like, something definitely moved in the road and then went back to the left into the trees. He goes, there's no two ways around that. Well, the area that we're in is right smack in the middle of my main encounter zone to run into them. So, yeah, it's entirely possible. It's just It was one of those quick, it happened, and it was over things. And like I said, the brother-in-law saw it, too. He just saw the motion.

He goes, I'm still not sure what I saw, except there was definitely something there that got back out of the road quickly. Interesting times here in southern Oregon, out in the woods for sure here. Hey, Greg, let's see, I wanted to make sure that we mention here as far as the weather, great hunting. Not a good fishing weekend, probably because of the rain. Would that be fair? I wouldn't necessarily say that, because especially tomorrow, we definitely could get some sunny periods. And if you get where sun is breaking out on the water, the showers may come and go, which I suspect they're going to continue to do throughout the weekend, sometimes more, sometimes less. and especially in that sometimes less, you get sun on the water, could wind up being some very good fishing. But, of course, last weekend, and especially on Sunday, it was truly great fishing.

If you weren't out hunting and you went fishing, you likely did very, very well. Okay, so a couple of quick things I wanted to touch on here briefly. Moon complex, is the rain hitting it? Is it pretty much going to put it out this weekend? Everything's getting hit now. In fact, they wound up picking up about a five, six acre fire over in Josephine County on Wednesday, and they broke resources away from the moon complex to go and assist. And that's actually fairly typical.

You get a big working incident. They bring a lot of resource in, specially specialized resources like hotshot crews, Type 2IA crews, aircraft. A new start gets going, and they will send assistance, in this case, from the Moon Complex. That's exactly what they did. They sent the Stanislaus Hot Shots from down in California that were working the Moon Complex fire, and they sent a Type 2 initial attack, meaning Type 2IA crew, over. as well to assist with that, plus helicopters. So, yeah, they wound up having resources to help the local unit get on that.

And the local unit in this case turned out to be Rogue River Sisku National Forest, but the Rogue River Sisku National Forest also got a big assist from Oregon Department of Forestry and Illinois Valley Fire as well. But, yeah, yesterday they were saying they were basically going to be mopping up that fire. Now we've got rains coming in hitting that fire as well as the Moon Complex. So even more help. But Moon Complex still has a big resource assignment on it as well as a type 1 incident management team. Trying to remember exactly how many hot shot crews are working.

Yeah, that's okay. That's all right. I just wanted the quick update on that grade. All right, just so we're looking good in there. Now, I'm going to grab a quick call, and then we have to wrap, though, on Palisades, okay? And because there's so much similarity and even the way it was reported there, too. But hi, you're on KMED. Greg's here.

What's your name? Morning. Name is Todd. Yeah, Todd. Question. Thank you, Bill. I'm sorry. This isn't pertinent to what you're saying.

If you don't mind. Okay. Okay, is it on topic or off topic, Todd? Because otherwise, I'll hold you over. Okay. It's off topic. Okay, I'll hold you over then here. And after Greg, I just want to make sure burn in daylight.

So, all right. Greg, let us talk about what happened. They ended up getting a guy that you figure ended up setting the Palisades fire. And it ended up smoldering there for a few days. So some are then saying, hey, you know, the fire departments there didn't really do their job either. Now, that's not what anybody's saying about here. But the similarities, even the way that the news reports were all talking climate change, climate change. They were saying climate change, climate change here with Almeda back in the day.

It's almost like the same playbook, just a different larger area, you know, down there because it was arson here too. And it's still not really talked about greatly, is it? I'm not hearing. It got swept under the rug. In California, for whatever else it is and does, where it comes to fire investigation, they're very aggressive. about it. They frequently report the arrests they're making for arson fires. They did it again over the course of the summer. I believe Cal Fire right now, the last time I saw, they had arrested 76 individuals just this year for starting fires. And you always hear about this. Where it comes

to Oregon, you never hear about it. The Palisades Fire, they put absolutely the biggest commitment at a specialized law enforcement I think I've ever seen on a fire. This fire wound up being the number one priority for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. They used a lot of specialized investigative and laboratory processing to get it figured out who started the fire. And it was pretty revealing some of the things they talked about at the press conference, which again, they got to the source of the Palisades Fire in 10 months, made an arrest. Here we are five years later, and it turns into nothing to see here. And when you watch what they're doing, meaning they, Tina Kotech,

all the local leadership, quote unquote, in Portland, how they're handling the current situation with Antifa and Ice up there, it's no wonder we're sitting here five years later with no real answers on Almeda and Open Chain. So your opinion then was that this was we don't really want to know, ultimately. Yeah. They really, they don't care is what it comes down to. They don't care in a lot of ways. They don't care about us down here.

It's just sweeping under the rug. And honestly, I've always believed they probably do have a pretty good idea who was involved in starting Almeda and Oban chain here. And then the other fires up to the north. And that's a black eye on them. Antifa currently in the streets in Portland attacking the ice facility is a black eye on them. And so they do what they've always done. deny, deny, deny, and literally obstruct any attempt to bring law and order to the situation. All right, yeah. I'll take that to the bank, too. I agree with you on it, all right.

Greg, I got a roll, but I appreciate you coming in with the outdoor report. Go get your buck this weekend, okay? Oh, by the way, real quickly, when I think the motivation was for that guy who started the fire, think of Ronald and backdraft. This guy is a serious pyromaniac, and they're the sickest of the sick. And yeah, maybe you have a little bit of societal beef because I think pretty much most individuals under 30 do because of what they've been taught to believe about America.

But he was a pyromaniac first and foremost. All right, fair enough. Hey, I really appreciate it. Greg. We'll catch you next Friday. Go get your buck. Have good time out in the woods. Everybody else, too.

All right. Greg Roberts atrogweather.com. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority, the sponsor of the Outdoor Report every Friday. on KMED, 993KBXG, and I'll grab your call out. Todd, stand by. I'll get your call just a moment before we have state representative Ed D.Lone in a few minutes. Dot com today. The Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED.

Todd, we held you over the break here after Mr. Outdoors report, and what's on your mind today? What's going on? I have a question about a gentleman you had on the show last week. He wrote a book about autism, and it was very impressive. I didn't write his name or the book named out. Oh, okay. Was he the gentleman who was actually a, who actually was, grew up autistic himself? Is that the one you're speaking? Okay. Yes. That was Leland Vitterd. Leland Vitterd is a news nation anchor, cable, you know, satellite TV news anchor, and it used to be with Fox in a bunch of other networks, a very long career. He's had a lot going on. Leland Vittert, and the book's name,

the title is born lucky born lucky and when he talks about being lucky he was pretty severely autistic and he considered himself really lucky because his father devoted so much of his life to training him how to react and and overcome the challenges of the well now even being told how to react to a joke as an example I thought it was pretty interesting what he was what he was doing it's a great book by the way really is Yes, he was very interesting. I'm glad you had him on the show. Thank you, Bill. Oh, thank you very much. Appreciate the question, Todd. And by the way, if you ever do have any questions, you can email me about that, Bill of Bill Myers Show.com. You can also head to KMED.com, because I do put guest information up because I do put guest information up because I do put on the website on KMED.com. 732, State Representative Ed Deal joins me here in a few minutes.

They want to get rid of Tina Kotech. They want to make Governor Kotech cry, cry about the O. Dot money going away, I guess. I wouldn't mind seeing that happen either. But no, they want to get this on the ballot, what ended up happening up at the latest legislative session. We'll talk about that, maybe some health care issues. Is it about illegal alien health care or other people going to be heard? by this too. We'll dig into a bunch of subjects coming up with Ed. News

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Dish. Hi, I'm Deb with father and son jewelry, and I'm on KMED. State Representative Ed Deal joins me. It's from House District 17, Staten in the Salem area. Ed, great to have you back on. It's been a while since we talked on the show. Welcome. Bill, it's great. Thanks for having me on.

We got a lot going on right now. And the first thing I wanted to do, oh my gosh, I think that, pardon me here, it just got really loud inside the studio here, Ed. It's like the skies opened up. I guess we're getting pounded with a storm right now. I thought something was going on here at a moment ago. But anyway, Anyway, the tax increases, which ended up coming out of the state legislative session, the one here just a few weeks ago. The goal is to get a repeal on the ballot, isn't that right? You got it, and it's called a referendum. So we have a proud history of referendums in the state.

And I think your listeners probably know we had a Senate and a House and a governor that ramrodded this bill through despite. wild public opposition. And it jacks up gas taxes. It jacks up vehicle registration fees and title fees. And it also doubles the statewide payroll transit tax. And, you know, 94% of the people testified in opposition, which is just overwhelming. That didn't seem to matter, though. It didn't seem to matter how much negative testimony you had. It just didn't matter. It was ignored, wasn't it? No, they just ignored it. And so this for us, you know, I'm a chief petitioner on this with Senator Bruce Starr and Jason Williams with Oregon taxpayers. And this is really the last resort for us to say, hey, you know, let's refer this to the people. And the people can have

an up or down vote on whether they want their gas taxes and registration fees and payroll transit taxes hike up. Now you have a website for this. It's nottaxor.com. No taxor.com. You download petitions there and do it, and how much do you need to make this happen? Yeah, right. So right now, the interesting thing is we cannot file a petition until the governor actually signs this into law. Oh, she still hasn't done that. Oh. She has not done that. So it's one of those weird things. We have 90 days to gather signatures. However, we cannot start until the governor signs it. So she, every day that she doesn't sign this, we are losing a day to gather signatures. Is there a limit to how long she can drag your feet before she signs the bill

so that you can get the recall or the citizen's initiative or the referendum on the ballot? She can drag this out for 30 working days. 30 working days. Theoretically, she could drag this out to November 12th. Then we filed a petition, the Secretary of State. Hopefully we can turn that around in a couple days. You know, we're at, we may not be able to gather signatures until November 15th. And we have until December 30th to submit those signatures.

Boy, that is hurry up. And that is a hurry up kind of operation there. Okay. So if you are successful, and I think you could be successful, I think this is something that has enough irritation, and it's not just on the right side of things. I think there are a lot of people on the left in the middle that are not real happy about these tax increases too. Okay? I think there's going to be support for this. If it is approved to go on the ballot, does that mean it stops the tax and fee increases until after the, the election next year. Exactly. It does. So once we get this on the ballot and people are fired up, we have volunteers from all over the state signing up, offering to help us.

But, yeah, once it actually gathers the signatures and that's validated, that lock and not take effect until this is voted on. And right now it would show up on the November 2026 election. general election in twenty twenty six but obviously governor kotech is uh dragging your feet it's just no doubt this is a strategy then to give you as little time as possible to do i i'm afraid yes i i'm afraid that that's what she's planning on doing i i can tell you that the optics are awful for that uh it's hard to claim your for democracy while you're denying while first you shove a bill down the Oraconian throat.

Oh, yeah. You deny him the opportunity to weigh in on it. State Representative Ed Deal, one of the chief petitioners on this one. You can find out more, no-taxor.com. So we can't do the petitions yet, but hopefully within the next few days, and you'll keep us in the room on that one. We will, and if people go to that website, no-taxor.com, sign up. Let us know you're interested in signing the petition.

Also, let us know your interest in volunteering. We have an organizational call Monday evening. If you sign up, let us know you're interested in volunteering. You'll be invited to that call, and we'll give you the rundown on how we're going to kill this tax. Ed, I think that's great. I'm hoping you do it, and I'm going to sign up and get on there, so I'm informed about this, too. I wanted to Now, I know that

one of the challenges we have is that there's limited bandwidth to get people's attention on signing thing or getting involved in anything politics. Would you agree with me on this? There's so many, so many things that you can throw with the people. Fair enough? Oh, yeah. You're exactly right. Okay. I wanted to bring up something

that people have been wanting me to get involved with, and this is reminding me of something that well-intentioned, but I don't think is effective at this point in time. And that is another petition which is being circulated right now to get Governor Kotech recalled. And as much as I would love to see Governor Kotech recalled, I don't think there is a majority of the population, including Democrats, that would pull her out of office right now. And I can't help but think that it's something which saps energy, which is badly needed on this referendum issue. I don't know if you have an opinion on that, but I just gave you mine.

Yeah, you know, I've been skeptical of the recall for those very reasons. I've also been in contact recently with Bill Minnicks, who I believe is the chief petitioner. He is, yes. And, you know, one thing I can say is he's got a core team of folks that are out there gathering petitions on that recall, and they are fired up as well to gather signatures for this referendum. So I'm really hoping that we can team together on that. I don't know where the recall effort will go, Bill. Those are really tough to recall a sitting governor.

Those are really tough. Does she deserve to be recalled? Oh, absolutely. But that's not the point. It's like, you know, you have limited time and you have limited energy to be able to devote to getting the voters' attention. And I'm concerned that it would be a little bit of a muddying of the waters right now because I think, I mean, I think we can just be honest with one another.

We're humans. We understand how Oregon voting goes. As much as I dislike her politics, I think that there are a lot of other people from the left that would just look at this. They'd circle the wagons. The unions would certainly circle the wagons and make sure that she stays in. probably going to run and she'll be running for re-election anyway again next year but anyway she will i just thought i would bring this up that there's a time to talk about recalls i just don't think right now is it and but you know getting the referendum on yeah

that's like job number one and it can actually pass i think there is uh you know bipartisan or across the political spectrum support for getting this passed and uh repealing those taxes and i think that would be the better or the bigger job to be focusing on right now You know, we have such a broad coalition that has joined forces here on this referendum. And if we do this, and we will, we will gather the signatures. We're going to have to, it's a daunting task, but we can do it. It's really going to send a message. How many signatures will you need in that?

We're not going to accept getting bills shoved down our throat. Yeah. How many signatures would you have to get in order to make this happen, you think? Yeah, it's roughly 78,000 signatures. It has the lowest threshold of all the different petitions that are out there statewide. So we're targeting 100,000 signatures. Yeah. Yeah, just make sure that you have enough to take care of any issues that may have with people who sign it.

Fair enough. All right. Now, you cannot pay signature gatherers on something like this, can you? Can't do that? Yes, you can. You can. Okay. It is possible.

What we're doing right now, though, is, you know, we are trying to raise money. And so we have the, if you go to no taxor.com, and you're interested in supporting financially for us to continue to fight against bad taxes, that's a place to do it. But we can do paid gatherers, we can do mailers. We could, for example, mailing petitions out to different households that are very likely to oppose this thing, which is about 90% of Oregon household. Yeah, yeah, just find the addresses, okay? Yeah.

All right, that would be great. All right, keep us in the room on this one, Ed, and while you are here, and once again, it is no-taxor.com. No-taxor.com. Get on their list, okay? Now then, I want to talk about some other things here because you're on the health committee in the state legislature correct that's right on the house side i'm vice chair of the health care committee all right i want to uh get beyond just the standard democratic and republican

party talking points and there's been a lot of conversation during this federal government shutdown about uh you know what is health care and i think i guess the standard way of looking at this is that the shutdown is over uh democrats wanting to say well uh hey we want to make sure that health care is funded. And of course, health care is always very broadly termed with them. And Republicans have tended to say this article that this is all about, this is about health care for illegal aliens. And there is a certain truth to that. And yet I'm seeing other stories that are indicating that there are American citizens that are, well, I have a real dog in this fight on these enhanced Obamacare tax subsidies, which expire at the end of the year, these

tax credits. Could you explain what is going on, and let's have a complete picture of this? Is there a way to can help us understand this? So there's a lot in that, what you just covered. Believe me. Oh, yeah. I figured it was. That's why I'm glad you're here, okay? But, so let's just talk about Oregon. So, and when it comes to Medicaid. That's the Oregon Health Plan. That's the Oregon Health Plan. How we know it. So Oregon has taken the approach to make sure everyone is insured. And there's a difference between being insured and having access to care, okay?

That's a whole other conversation. But what Oregon has done is taking advantage of every Medicaid dollar that we can grab from the federal government, more so than about every other state. So that means when, you know, when the Fed makes some adjustments, and other states catch a cold, Oregon ends up on life support. And that's what we're seeing in Oregon. So the feds are doing what I would consider you consider probably some common sense things. Say, hey, you know, if you're going to be on Medicaid, if you're going to get state-funded

insurance or federally funded insurance, then you need to be working or looking for work or being educated to work if you are of healthy working age. And so that's the, that enrollment criteria has been introduced. It's actually not much different than it was just a few years ago. So that's one thing that has concerned a lot of legislators that people will be removed from the Medicaid rolls because of that. there is another thing about non-U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants getting quote-unquote Medicaid. Federally, they're really not able to do that. There are a few exceptions to that.

They cannot get federal dollars. But in Oregon, Oregon created an initiative called the healthier Oregon program that uses state funds to provide free insurance like Medicaid, Medicaid like insurance for non-U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants. And to the tune of $1 billion every budget cycle, every two years. That's a half billion. Yeah, that's a half billion a year. And that is real money. So they use state money to do this, but would it be fair to say, and I'm, Like I said, I'm spitballing here because I'm not on your deal, but is Oregon then leveraging the federal Medicaid or Oregon health dollars in order to be able to free upstate money to have non-citizen health coverage through using state fund? Is that how that works? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

And from the federal perspective, they're saying, hey, if you have enough state dollars to ensure. illegal immigrants, well, then you have enough state dollars to chip in more for Medicaid. And so I think that's kind of an attitude that some at the federal level are taking. And we have to remember, too, Bill, when you look at the whole picture, Oregon is a debtor state, meaning we receive more federal payments into the state then we pay to the feds and taxes. We're not the only state like that, but we definitely are that way.

And because we're doing that, when we're providing these welfare programs, which consume about 45% of our state budget now. You'd think education was the biggest budget item? No, it's health care and human services, 45% of our state budget. But we are doing this off the backs of our kids and grandkids. They're the ones who have to pay the debt for the welfare checks that are going today.

And that, to me, is grossly unfair. Okay, so I think he did a pretty good job of explaining what this is. So now, I'm going to bring up a story which was on one of our local TV stations. I'm going to share a bit of a story here. And it's a Gold Beach woman. It says a local woman, and of course, they don't use their name. apparently. A local woman was surprised to get a letter last Friday saying her insurance is estimating to increase by about $1,000 each month next year. The Oregon Health Insurance Marketplace

tells NBC5 that the enhanced premium tax credits set to expire at the end of this year. This is what we've been talking about here, Representative Deal, are the biggest reason for the increases that Oregonians using the health insurance marketplace are seeing NBC5 reporting previously, the tax credits potential expiration among the key issues in the health care dispute prompting the shutdown, right? Diane from Gold Beach, 58 years old, middle income says she can't afford the $1,000 a month increase, and she said she would pay more for insurance than any other expense in my life. Now, I don't know what her immigration status is, or if she is a citizen or not.

They don't speak to this on that. but is that a real risk here that under the guise of, well, because we want to take off and the feds don't want us paying for illegal immigrants to be on the Oregon health plan, even through the back door, like what you've been talking about, leveraging money. Do we have real people that could be hurt by this also? How do you see this? Yeah, you are, that is correct. I can't speak to the exact dollar amount, but for some households, it's pretty significant.

So the tax subsidies that were put in place just a few years ago are being rolled back. And this was supposed to have been temporary, right? It was a temporary thing. I believe they were put in really during the COVID era. and so they're being rolled back. And what's happened in the meantime is that, you know, the insurance rates through the exchange have really increased. So people have relied on these subsidies. Now that the subsidies are going away, they're facing considerable hikes in their insurance payments.

Which means we're finding out what the insurance really costs. And boy, it's massive, massive increase. isn't our real issue here representative deal that the system is broken i don't know how you can describe this any other way when you're looking at it it really is and people need to know this this isn't because of hr one or the big beautiful bill that we've been facing this crisis with health care this has been building for years and oregon has tried to take a limited amount of and stretch it as far and wide as it could. And what it's done is it's brought a lot of health care providers to the brink.

And so now we're kind of facing that. And we have to make some difficult choices. You know, does the legislature continue to expand the benefits that are part of the federally subsidized Medicaid program, or do we trim that back? do we expend state dollars to provide free health insurance for illegal immigrants, or do we try and help subsidize folks on a fixed income so that they can buy their own insurance? Those are some of the really tough decisions that we're going to have to make. It's also important to note that Oregon, through regulations, and I can get into these,

we have made it really difficult and really expensive to do. do health care business in the state plus regular business, right? Talk about that a lot, but it also hits the health providers, and they will give you a laundry list of legislation that makes it exceptionally difficult to do business in Oregon. And so we have to pair that back to. So I see this whole discussion, what's happening with HR1 as an opportunity for us to do kind of a reset, to be more efficient in our delivery of care, to reduce some of this onerous regulation, to reprioritize on what's important, and yeah, those will be difficult

conversations. And I think we would all agree that I see this one woman from Gold Beach, and I'm sympathetic, you know, when you hear those kind of things, and I know we're primed to be sympathetic because we're all humans and we get this, but perhaps maybe Oregon is going to sharpen its pencil if it is no longer subsidizing illegal immigrants when it comes to health care. Maybe more money could be pride for helping the Dianz of this world. Is that really kind of where we're hoping this ends up going? I hope so. I think what I see in simple terms is Oregon has this grand desire to have everybody covered with free universal health care, but they're not willing to

pay for it. And so what ends up happening is the federal, you know, the Oregon Health Plan payments don't even cover the true cost of care. So who's paying the difference? People like Diane when she buys her insurance on the market. And people who have other insurance, they're paying higher costs. They're paying higher costs so that the Oregon Health Plan can pretend that paying 50 cents or 60 cents on the dollar is paying for the service, right? Right. And so what part of the adjustment is to say, hey, you know, if you are of able-bodied, if you're able-bodied and you're of working age, you know, if you want to receive free health care, free insurance that is paid by our tax dollars, then you better get to

work. Going to have to do that, yeah. Yeah, and so I think that kind of adjustment needs to be made because what we're doing now is simply unsustainable. Oh, yeah. We're running out of other people's money big time, for sure. State representative, yeah, state representative Ed Deal, I appreciate your take on it, and thanks for diving down.

And I know it's a very big and it's a very complex thing, and I hope that we were able to simplify it enough to, you know, try to, you know, understand what's at stake here. So it is a big deal. much for having been on and we will have you back okay take care i appreciate the opportunity bill thanks state representative deal it is km ed and km ed hd one eagle point metford kbxg grants pass it's eight o'clock two dogs fabric