A couple years ago, I got sick and it felt like a serrated knife was digging and ripping underneath my left rib every time I breathed, moved, or laid down. I put off going to an urgent care for days because I was a student and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to afford treatment. When I finally caved and went to the urgent care, the urgent care sent me to the ER because their tests showed that I might have had a pulmonary embolism. It turned out to be pleurisy, which hurt like hell but wasn’t lethal like the alternative could have been.
This evening, a stich in my side that feels like a shadow of what the pleurisy was got me thinking of what could have happened if I had an embolism. I’ve put off getting medical care a number of times because I wasn’t sure if my insurance would cover it and, even if it did, I wasn’t sure if I could afford it. I know other people who’ve done the same. I’m sure other people have delayed treatment for the same reasons I did and didn’t make it out the other side because of it.
I think that things need to change. We spend significantly more on healthcare than people in other countries and, even though we pay a de facto tax to health insurance companies, we still can’t be sure that we won’t lose everything to medical bills.
Under the Trump administration, I don’t think we’re likely to see much major healthcare reform happen on a federal scale anytime soon. However, seeing progressive candidates like Mamdani and Wilson win large city elections gives me hope that something might be possible on a local or state level. In Canada, their national public healthcare system grew out of Saskatchewan’s province-level system. If Washington did the same thing and led the charge for America, it could eventually lead to reform nation-wide.
To be honest, I’m new to a lot of this. I’m not a politician and I’ve never worked with any grassroots organizations. I’ve attended protests and I vote, but I’m not really politically involved otherwise. I don’t even live in Seattle (I’m near Spokane right now, though I will be moving to the Seattle area in March). I’m posting here because Seattle has a lot of influence on Washington politics and I’m curious to see what people here think about how feasible getting state-level public healthcare on a ballot would be.
TL;DR: I think Washington should have public healthcare. Do you think Washington should have public healthcare?
submitted by /u/atheistossaway
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