An alliance for Cascadia's health
This week, reacting to the meltdown of the CDC under HHS leader and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the governors of three west coast states – Washington, Oregon, and California – announced the creation of the West Coast Health Alliance that will center their vaccine and other public health policies on science rather than politics. Hawaii announced this week it will also join the alliance.
This is what real autonomy from a federal government descending into fascism and eugenics-based health policy looks like. In a joint statement, the governors announced their intention to cooperate on creating vaccine-related policy based on evidence-based science. The move comes as RFKJ fired the CDC director after she refused to implement his preferred vaccine policies, and after several top leaders at the CDC also resigned in protest. RFKJ was subject to blistering questioning during Congressional hearings this week – including Washington Senator Maria Cantwell calling the man – who literally looks like a zombie and speaks as if he gargles kerosene every morning – a "charlatan."
“When federal agencies abandon evidence-based recommendations in favor of ideology, we cannot continue down that same path. Washington State will not compromise when it comes to our values: science drives our public health policy. Public health at its core is about prevention — preventing illness, preventing the spread of disease, and preventing early, avoidable deaths." – Dennis Worsham, Washington State Secretary of Health
The alliance is a welcome step toward independence for Washington and Oregon from an increasingly unreliable federal government. It also begs the question of what Cascadia is doing to prepare for additional GOP cuts to health care funding – especially tax subsidies for Obamacare, which expire at the end of this year. Some Republican lawmakers are indicating they'll support extending the credits, which make insurance through the ACA marketplace affordable to many residents of Oregon and Washington (including me). But there are still plenty of conservatives in the GOP who want to end them. What if anything will our legislatures do to ensure people can stay insured?
Cascadia needs to join most of the advanced economies of the world and provide universal health insurance to its residents. Washington has a Universal Health Care Commission, and there's a strong movement among progressives working create a government-funded option. And in Oregon, a task force on universal care sent recommendations to the legislature in 2022, and supporters hope to send a single-payer plan to the legislature in 2027 or put it on the ballot in 2028.
Our region, when thinking about creating a constitutional framework for independence, should definitely consider enshrining rights to housing, a clean environment, and health care. With a population of around 12 million, Oregon and Washington together would form a nation on the scale of some mid-sized European nations like Sweden, Belgium, or Czechia – all of which have found ways to create universal health care systems. Our combined GDP of $1.2 trillion would put us in league with the Netherlands – certainly wealthy enough to guarantee all of our citizens health care.
We could do this without independence – but freeing ourselves from the burden of a bloated military budget and Trump's masked secret police would allow us to better spend our tax revenues on our priorities, not Washington DC's.
--Andrew Engelson
