Brett Smith Pushes Broader Government Health Care and Wage Policies Than Kotek in Oregon Governor’s Race

Oregon — Pacific Green Party gubernatorial candidate Brett Smith is staking out positions to the left of Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek on two issues likely to play prominently in Oregon’s 2026 governor’s race: health care and the cost of living.

Both candidates describe affordability as a central problem facing Oregon households, and both favor a significant state role in health care, housing and consumer protection. But their newly published platforms differ considerably in how far they would expand government’s direct role.

Smith’s “Oregon Plan” proposes effectively opening the Oregon Health Plan to every Oregon resident, regardless of income, while imposing a new surcharge on medium and large employers that pay workers below a calculated living wage. His campaign says the money would support health coverage, food assistance and programs for lower-wage workers.

Kotek’s second-term agenda takes a more incremental approach. It calls for protecting and expanding existing health programs, regulating insurers, increasing housing construction, expanding childcare and preschool, reducing prescription-drug costs and protecting Medicaid coverage from federal reductions.

The differences illustrate an unusual feature of the 2026 race. Kotek has governed as a progressive Democrat on issues including housing, labor, abortion access, Medicaid and behavioral health. Smith, however, is proposing substantially broader government intervention in wages and health insurance than Kotek has included in her reelection platform.

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Smith proposes an Oregon Health Plan available to everyone

The most significant difference involves health insurance.

Smith calls his proposal “Healthcare for Working Oregonians,” describing it as a universal public option that would expand eligibility for the Oregon Health Plan, or OHP, to every Oregon resident.

Currently, OHP primarily provides Medicaid coverage to qualifying lower-income residents, along with coverage through programs including Healthier Oregon and Oregon’s Basic Health Program.

Under Smith’s proposal, income eligibility would effectively disappear as a barrier to joining the public program.

Residents earning below Oregon’s median income would pay no monthly premium. Higher-income residents would pay premiums on a sliding scale, with Smith proposing maximum monthly premiums of $350 for an individual and $500 for a family of four.

The plan would provide comprehensive benefits based on existing OHP coverage and eliminate deductibles for core services. Smith also proposes automatic enrollment mechanisms using the state’s existing OHP infrastructure.

Private health insurance would remain available. Smith’s proposal therefore differs from a traditional single-payer system, under which one government-financed program generally replaces most private primary insurance. Smith says he supports efforts toward single-payer health care but presents his public-option proposal as an alternative that could be pursued in the meantime.

Implementing such a system would be a major undertaking. Smith acknowledges that it would require approval from the Legislature and coordination of federal waivers. His plan calls for beginning that process during the first year of his administration and reaching universal eligibility by the fourth year. The campaign page says financing would rely on targeted revenue sources but does not provide a complete fiscal estimate for the universal public option.

Kotek focuses on protecting and regulating the existing system

Kotek’s health care proposal does not call for making OHP universally available.

Instead, her campaign proposes defending the existing Oregon Health Plan from federal Medicaid reductions while strengthening Oregon’s current combination of Medicaid, employer insurance and individual-market coverage.

Her second-term platform calls for fighting insurance premium increases, expanding the behavioral-health workforce, protecting rural maternal health services and working with other states to reduce prescription-drug prices.

Kotek also proposes additional insurance regulation, including prohibiting insurers from using artificial intelligence to deny claims, strengthening protections against hidden fees and banning personalized pricing practices that use consumers’ personal information to charge different prices.

Her administration has also emphasized behavioral health. Kotek’s campaign says Oregon has added more than 1,660 mental-health and addiction-treatment beds, while her administration backed legislation intended to streamline credentialing and expand the behavioral-health workforce.

That makes the distinction between the candidates less about whether government should intervene in health care than about the scale and form of that intervention.

Kotek proposes strengthening coverage, controlling costs and regulating private insurers within Oregon’s existing health-care structure. Smith proposes making a government health plan directly available to essentially the entire population while allowing private insurance to continue alongside it.

By conventional definitions of progressive health policy, Smith’s proposal represents the larger expansion of public health insurance.

Oregon already has relatively high insurance coverage, but costs remain an issue

The debate also comes as Oregon enters the election with comparatively high insurance coverage but continuing concerns about affordability.

According to the Oregon Health Authority, 94.8% of Oregonians had health insurance in 2024, compared with 91.8% nationally.

Oregon Health Authority research found that 18% of residents buying individual-market commercial insurance reported delaying medical care because of cost in 2024. Eleven percent of people with employer-sponsored insurance reported delaying care for the same reason. Even among OHP recipients, who generally do not pay premiums, deductibles or cost sharing for covered services, roughly 17% reported delaying care because of costs.

Smith’s proposal attempts to address the insurance-cost side of that equation by giving residents access to a publicly administered alternative.

Kotek’s proposal instead concentrates on protecting Medicaid, restraining insurance and prescription costs, increasing providers and treatment capacity, and maintaining coverage requirements.

Smith would charge large employers whose wages fall below a living-wage benchmark

Smith also proposes a significant departure from current Oregon wage policy.

Oregon presently has three regional minimum wages. As of July 2026, they are $16.80 an hour in the Portland metro area, $15.55 in standard counties and $14.55 in designated nonurban counties. State law automatically adjusts the rates for inflation.

Rather than simply proposing another increase in the statutory minimum wage, Smith wants to create what his campaign calls a “Wage Gap Public Cost Recovery Surcharge.”

The concept is based on the argument that employers paying wages insufficient to cover workers’ basic needs effectively shift part of their labor costs to taxpayers when employees qualify for programs such as Medicaid or food assistance.

Employers with fewer than 50 workers would be exempt.

Businesses with 50 or more employees would face a surcharge based on the difference between wages paid and a state-defined living-wage benchmark. The charge would decline as wages approached that benchmark and disappear once compensation reached it.

Employers with between 50 and 249 employees would initially pay half the calculated surcharge before being phased into the full rate. Employers with at least 250 workers would face the full rate sooner.

Smith’s campaign estimates the system could collect between $700 million and $3.4 billion annually, although that figure is a campaign projection rather than an independent state revenue estimate.

He proposes directing 50% of the proceeds to OHP, 30% to SNAP administration and emergency food programs, 15% to wage assistance and workforce training and 5% to administration.

The proposal would also publicly identify covered employers, including the proportion of their workforce earning below the living-wage threshold and the amount of surcharge they paid.

That approach is considerably more interventionist than Kotek’s published second-term affordability platform because it would use state taxation or assessments to create a direct financial penalty for larger employers paying wages substantially below a state-established living-cost standard.

Kotek emphasizes housing, childcare and consumer costs

Kotek’s affordability agenda approaches household expenses from several other directions.

Her campaign proposes expanding infant and toddler childcare while creating a path toward universal preschool. On housing, she wants additional options for renters and first-time buyers, faster construction permitting, more starter homes and expanded down-payment assistance.

Housing supply has been a centerpiece of Kotek’s first term. In April, she signed a package of bills intended to make it easier for communities to add housing for middle-income households, seniors and farmworkers. Kotek has consistently argued that Oregon’s housing affordability problem is closely connected to insufficient housing supply.

Her affordability agenda also includes more direct regulation in some sectors. Kotek signed legislation designed to prevent large electricity users such as data centers from shifting grid costs onto residential customers, and her campaign says she would pursue additional restrictions on hidden fees and certain insurance-industry practices.

The result is a platform that mixes government investment, regulation and efforts to increase private-sector supply.

Smith’s wage proposal would go a step further by establishing an explicit government-defined living-wage benchmark and requiring larger employers below that threshold to compensate the state for some of the public-assistance costs associated with lower wages.

Two progressive approaches, but different limits on government intervention

The candidates overlap substantially compared with the broader ideological spectrum of the governor’s race.

Smith is running as the Pacific Green Party nominee. The party tends to be environmentally focused, anti-war and generally aligned more closely with progressive politics than conservatism. Smith is currently the principal minor-party candidate challenging Kotek and Republican state Sen. Christine Drazan.

But Smith’s affordability and health-care proposals create identifiable policy differences with the Democratic incumbent.

On health care, Kotek would preserve Oregon’s existing public-private insurance structure while expanding access and regulation; Smith would make the state’s public health plan available universally as an alternative to private coverage.

On wages, Kotek’s published second-term platform does not propose a comparable living-wage assessment on private employers; Smith would create one for businesses with 50 or more employees.

Both candidates favor broader government involvement in areas such as housing affordability, health coverage and consumer protection. Smith’s proposals, however, place greater emphasis on universal public provision and redistribution of costs from individuals and taxpayers toward larger employers.

Those positions put Smith to Kotek’s left on these particular economic and health-care questions, even as Kotek’s platform itself contains policies generally associated with the progressive wing of Democratic politics, including universal preschool, expanded affordable housing programs, stronger insurance regulation and protection of Medicaid coverage.

The practical questions surrounding Smith’s proposals would include their total cost, the federal approvals necessary to expand OHP, the size and incidence of the proposed employer surcharge, and how businesses might respond to it. His campaign provides implementation timelines and a broad revenue estimate for the wage surcharge, but a full independent fiscal analysis of the proposals is not yet available.

Kotek, meanwhile, enters the comparison with nearly four years of an administrative and legislative record that voters can measure alongside her second-term promises. Her campaign emphasizes that record, particularly housing, behavioral health and consumer protections, while Smith is asking Oregon voters to consider a substantially larger expansion of the state’s role in health insurance and the relationship between wages and public benefits.