The editorial in question is at present the Opinion section lead in the current online edition of the paper.  ( March 07, 2001)  The title of the piece is: 

                      Consider health plan

Mr. Hering is one of the best known small town newspaper editors in Oregon primarily due to his frequent appearances on Seven Days, the OPB Friday evening half hour analysis show  that concerns itself with topics relating to the state.  There is often an independent quality about Hering's opinions that makes his testimony, unlike that of the rest of the usual panel, seem to have some of the guiding philosophical principles one associates with a political conservative.

What you're about to read, however, clearly puts him in an entirely different basket.  One, in fact, that if taken as a sign of true context, would easily explain his frequent appearances on that program.  The moderator of Seven Days is a former very, very close associate of Governor John Kitzhaber (which explains her rise to press prominence), and her panel always includes a two or three-to-one imbalance in the favor of the political left. To give Seven Days its due, it is not as bad as Washington Week in Review, which is unaware that there is such a thing as a rational non-liberal view in America.

Here are the first two paragraphs of Mr. Hering's editorial.

 Health Care for All - Oregon has refiled its initiative
 petition to provide universal health care coverage to
 everybody in the state. Its proposal may sound
 utopian, but it deserves consideration.

 Under the group's scheme, everybody would be
 covered for necessary medical procedures
 including dental care and prescription drugs. To
 pay for the vast expenses of such a system, the
 state would raise income taxes on individuals and
 employers, and it would use all the public funds
 already spent on health care by local, state and
 federal governments.

Hillary Clinton attempted to create a bureaucracy that would envelope one-seventh of the U.S. economy with her universal health care proposal.  With a brand new Democrat in the White House and both houses of Congress solidly in the hands of liberal Democrats, she and her friends couldn't pull it off.  The national rejection of that idea began a revolution that gave both the House and the Senate to the Republicans for the first time since the Eisenhower Administration,  kept them both under Republican control for the longest span in living memory and finally cost the Democrats the White House, to boot -- in spite of one of the finest economic periods in American history.

In the face of all that, plus the hordes of Canadians who daily cross the border to get health care in the U.S. when it is "free" in their own country, Mr. Hering thinks this idea deserves "serious consideration?"  In the face of evidence from the Nordic lands that a system based on these principles inevitably leads to tax rates above eighty percent, Mr. Hering thinks this idea can take the state in a good direction?   After looking at the low quality of service and high costs of the system in Great Britain and France, after discovering that to read at night in a Cuban hospital one has to bring one's own light bulbs, Mr. Hering thinks this idea may have merit?

Amazing!  We move on.

 The supporters believe that the system would not
 necessarily be more expensive overall than the
 system we have. The higher taxes would replace
 what Oregon companies and residents already pay
 in insurance premiums.

 One likely objection is that this is a vast expansion
 of government activity. It's a valid objection. But if
 somebody has a better idea on how to provide
 adequate coverage for everyone, let's hear it.

"Not necessarily more expensive overall than the system we have?"  A government bureaucracy as efficient as a private system?  Any government bureaucracy in any place at any time in world history was cost-efficient?  The U.S military, required by way of good sense and the U.S. Constitution, has at any time been cost-efficient?  The old federal welfare conglomerate was at any time one tenth as cost-efficient as the worst religious charity in the nation?  There is a public school in the U.S.A. that produces an educational product equivalent to any Catholic school anywhere for less than twice the cost?  From highways to freeways to MAX there has been a single example in Oregon history of a major transportation project that has been finished both on time and without cost overruns?  The D.O.T., a few years back, billed taxpayers Fifty Million Dollars for a computer system that didn't work and Mr. Hering thinks a case for government efficiency can be made?

Amazing!

 In contracts with many public employees, Oregon
 taxpayers already pay for comprehensive medical
 coverage - but not for themselves. A system like
 the one proposed would fix that unfairness and set
 it right. (hh)

There was, once upon a time, a president named Franlkin Delano Roosevelt.  He stole some ideas from a New York Irishman by the name of Al Smith, and set up a system that has strangled American productivity for decades.  His Social Security program, a Ponzi scheme that billed young American workers to pay for the retirement security of elderly Americans, became one of the largest items in the budget, pays a lower return on investment than your local bank savings account, creates no capital wealth for the participants and, until the Republicans recently closed the vault, was the biggest ripoff money source for general fund expenditures ever seen.

And, Mr. Hering thinks that socialist retirement was such a cost-effective process that we need socialist health care, too?

Amazing!

Can there be found today a single man bold enough to look the public in the face and say that the current Oregon Health Plan has not grown far beyond original predictions in terms of cost and service spectrum?  Is there a living Oregonian other than flaming liberals who would have voted for that plan if they had been told that it would finance sex change operations and expensive medical procedures for incarcerated illegal aliens so they could be exported to their home country in better condition?

But if  somebody has a better idea on how to provide
 adequate coverage for everyone, let's hear it.  Its proposal may sound  utopian, but it deserves consideration.

Here is a link to the organization Mr. Hering is supporting.  It's called Health Care for All - Oregon 

Here are some of the headlines you will see on that site.

Cubans tell NHS the secret of £7 a head healthcare

We have already covered the Cuban secret of seven Pound (British dollar) per head health care.  You don't light the wards at night.  Another thing you don't do is feed the patients.  The family does that.  It also keeps costs down if you lower the incidence of surgery by having waiting lines so long that ten percent of the potential patients die before they reach the operating room. Long lines, by the way, is one of the reasons an army of Canadians crosses the border to pay for health care in the U.S. each year.

Despite economic boom,  number of uninsured drops only 4 percent

There, my friends, is a pure example of how a liberal thinks.  The situation is improving, so they want to junk the system and replace it with a government bureaucracy.

Nader calls for health care reform

Ralph Nadir is the best thing that's happened to American politics since Hillary's health care program.  He almost singlehandedly gave the presidency to George W. Bush because half the flaming lefties that voted for him would have normally supported Al Gore.

His solution to every problem is spelled "more government."  His tax policies would rape the capital support base, paralyzing the economy, his environmental policies would make the entire nation a blacked-out dead ringer for a Californian driving a two-cylinder car, and his health care approach is a duplicate of the one this organization, and apparently Mr. Hering, both support.  It is an approach that would take the most efficient health care system in world history and turn it into a third-rate utopian banana republic failure. 

And, here's a final, ominous piece of text from that site.

One of the most important cost control mechanisms in our proposed ballot initiative is the emphasis on  preventive health care. 

There's a certain logic to this.  Once you've actually studied what happens to health care where it is socialized, you have a great incentive to do anything possible to keep from getting sick.

My friends, do you really want the government to be able to define "preventive health care?"  (This week eggs are bad for you, next week they aren't.  This week thalidomide is great for pregnant women, next week it is producing tragically deformed babies.)  Do you really want a government agency deciding when you should have a medical procedure, who should perform it and what kind of medical procedure it should be?  Do you really want a government agency deciding where hospitals should be located, how many physicians there should be and which one should be assigned to you?  Read this key early line from Mr. Hering's text, again.

Under the group's scheme, everybody would be
 covered for necessary medical procedures

You really want a govermnent bureaucracy deciding if a medical procedure is necessary for you?

If the answer is yes, then Mr. Hering is, in this editorial, speaking your language.  Use the website address I have provided and donate money to this bunch.  And, while you're waiting for the utopian perfection of universal socialized health care, buy a ticket to Cuba or England, and go take a look at the health care for which you are going to pay through the nose.

The current Oregon Health Plan, modified to eliminate sex change operations and kidney transplants for soon-to-be evicted illegal aliens, is a good idea, and as far as we should go, Mr. Hering.  The proposal to extend that decent idea into a monstrous government program, a concept you have supported in this editorial, is probably the worst health care idea generated in our state's history. 

I will probably be criticized for referring to your support as a hoax, Mr. Hering, so should here explain my use of the term.  In a larger sense it relates to the group that is sponsoring this travesty - Health Care for All - Oregon. They are trying to sell a fairy tale to the people of Oregon.   The use of the term with respect to you has to do with what I view as self-deception on your part.  I don't argue with your motives, which obviously are based in sympathy for people who don't have health care.  So, when you  recommend serious consideration of socialized medicine, which hammers the poor hardest of all while the rich head to a country where they can buy good care, I am forced to the possibility that you, too, are selling a fairy tale -- to yourself.

I've had bad days, myself.  None of us are perfect.

(Larry Leonard)