Our Oregon, the coalition of left-leaning advocacy groups and unions, is planning a series of health care town halls in areas that are mostly represented by Republicans in the Legislature — and encouraging those legislators to attend.

The town halls, upcoming in West Linn, Bend and Hood River over the next couple of weeks, are specifically aimed at health care, said Our Oregon spokeswoman Katherine Driessen.

Driessen says that legislators in those areas — she named State Rep. Julie Parrish, R-Tualatin/West Linn, Rep. Knute Buehler, R-Bend, and Rep. Mark Johnson, R-Hood River, and Sen. Chuck Thomsen, R-Hood River — didn’t “vote with their constituents” on health care this legislative session.

While the tussling over the federal Affordable Care Act continues in Congress, the center of the storm on health care in Oregon politics is House Bill 2391, which narrowly passed the Legislature.

Parts of the bill, which lays out how the state collects revenue to pay for its Medicaid program, may go to the ballot in January. A group of petitioners — including Rep. Parrish — is busy gathering signatures.

Our Oregon was planning another town hall in Ashland, represented by State Sen. Alan DeBoer, until they learned that the senator was holding his own event.

“We’re holding town halls and hope they’ll listen to their constituents about the importance of health care,” Driessen said.

Asked whether the group had their eye on 2018 — terms in the House of Representatives are two years long, and demographically, the areas they’ve targeted appear to have the potential to go blue — Driessen said: “this is more about policy.”