WASHINGTON STATE– The cost of healthcare has been the issue front and center at ballot boxes and campaign trails across the U.S., but the issue could go much further than red vs. blue, as insurance companies have more control than ever in a system many think is broken.
The request comes after the OIC approved a 22.2% rate increase for Washington’s 2027 Exchange health insurance market.
Calls for universal healthcare in the U.S. have been dismissed for years, often coming from the political fringes, but a longtime supporter in a position with real leverage brings a new legislation request to the table.
Patty Kuderer, a former senator from Washington’s 48th District, has held the office of insurance commissioner since 2025.
In the legislation request, drafted in late October, titled “Ensuring Access to Primary Care," Kuderer and her office detail the reasons why they believe now is the time.
The request states, “Washington consumers are struggling to access timely, comprehensive and affordable primary care services within the current insurance-based health care coverage and delivery system.”
Kuderer argues that lacking accessibility to primary and preventative care worsens wait times, administrative burden, and the state’s already low medical staffing—linking to a study that finds 40% of emergency room visits could be avoided with better access to primary care.
She also argues that not only patients but also healthcare providers are getting strangled by both the system and insurance companies.
“Our health care system has been broken for a very long time,” says Kuderer.
“It's not working for providers. It's not working for patients… There is no country in the world that has copied the United States in creating a for-profit health care system… Our system is set up right now to pick winners and losers depending on the size of your pocketbook."
Kuderer states that primary care is actually a loss leader for insurance companies—and that his type of legislation could improve their bottom line in the long run.
Kuderer’s been fighting this fight for a while, meeting with universal healthcare advocacy groups for years.
She says the realization came when she had her daughter in an extremely premature birth over 30 years ago.
In her account, Kuderer, shortly after her daughter’s birth and ensuing treatment, received a letter from her insurance company detailing that her daughter was already nearing her coverage cap, thus limiting continued care options based on the money in Kuderer’s bank account.
“I had the personal experience myself of having some bureaucrat sitting in an office somewhere making a decision that life-saving care for my infant daughter was experimental. So, yeah, I feel pretty passionate about this,” she says.
Kuderer contends that she is a capitalist and that little-to-no additional taxation would be required to support her drafted care pooling system. She states that the funds of the public are stressed enough as is.
“The money's already in the system. This is a multitrillion-dollar system. The dollars are already there. It's just the way they're being spent."
To read the OIC’s writing on the legislation request, click here. For Kuderer's blog post on the legislation request, click here.
