If health care is a right for all Oregonians, who will pay for it? That’s a question House Democrats chose to ignore Tuesday in Salem.

Without a single Republican vote, the House decided to ask voters to change Oregon’s Constitution to make the state responsible for making health care available to every resident. The bill now goes to the Senate.

If the Senate and the voters agree, the constitution would declare: “It is the obligation of the state to ensure that every resident of Oregon has access to cost-effective, medically appropriate and affordable health care as a fundamental right.”

The move would be unprecedented in the United States, according to The Eugene Register-Guard, which reported that other states have turned away from the idea because the costs are impossible. In Vermont, for example, the governor ended a single-payer system after an analysis predicted employers would pay an 11.5 percent tax and individuals a 9.5 percent tax to finance it.

Oregon’s League of Women Voters said it couldn’t support health care as a right because the state “has insufficient income to support its current responsibilities and cannot provide the added cost of health care coverage for all its residents at this time.”

Well said.

An opinion from Legislative Counsel Dexter Johnson said the mandate might carry a minimal cost, or “have enormous financial consequences,” depending on how the Legislature chose to fulfill it. He did acknowledge that someone could sue the state, but said it isn’t clear what “the maximum extent of the state’s liability would be.”

Clear as mud.

Adding to the lack of clarity, Democratic leaders described the measure as “aspirational,” leaving us to wonder if this is just a word game or if they really intend to put the state on the hook for everybody’s health care costs.

In a state that can’t manage the commitments it has already made — think foster children and public pensions and Medicaid expansion — this feel-good measure is an irresponsible political game.