WHT stands for the Washington Health Trust, a universal health care program that would replace private insurance with public coverage for all Washingtonians. As far as policy goes, you cannot come up with an idea that would have a more immediate and meaningful impact on the lives of working-class people in this state.
I will freely admit my bias: I have Type 1 diabetes and pay obscene amounts for the simple privilege of not dying — but I think the WHT is an absolute no-brainer. I thought so when I first learned about it, via the Washington State Democratic Party's endorsement of it during the 2024–2025 legislative session, and I was shocked to see it fail then, in a state wholly controlled by Democrats.
Given that it didn't pass and won't have the chance to for another four months, why are we talking about it this week? There's certainly a lot going on with local politics. The current City Council is considering drastically expanding the Seattle Police Department's (SPD) ability to surveil us; the consent decree that SPD has operated under for the last 13 years is kaput; and people are talking about retail theft again, in the context of Kroger, a scandalously profitable corporation, closing four Seattle-area stores. All of those issues warrant your attention right now, not four months from now.
We're talking about the WHT now because mayoral candidate Katie Wilson is talking about it, via a newly issued endorsement. We should be talking about it every day until House Bill 1445 and Senate Bill 5233 are enacted into law, but that might get a little repetitive for the purposes of this column. Anyway, why did Wilson issue an endorsement smack-dab in the middle of the Washington State Legislature's recess?
For starters, the dodgy combination of federal funding, used chewing gum, and duct tape that holds our health care system together is losing the federal funding part. Even if the duct tape holds, calling it an unmitigated disaster doesn't even begin to cover it. President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," which somehow is now law, contains devastating cuts to funding for Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies. Our state stands to lose about $4 billion in federal funding for both programs, according to Andre Stackhouse, executive director of Whole Washington, the group behind the WHT. That could render as many as 750,000 Washingtonians uninsured, he added, doubling our state's uninsured population.
"For the longest time, the thing that we would always hear is, 'We would love to do this, but we're going to need the federal money,'" said Stackhouse. "Our case has always been that the state needs to step forward and take this action and then get whatever it can from the federal government."
In the worst-case scenario, which is the one we're in, that looks to be nil. But that might be okay. As luck would have it, while the WHT bills were written with the assumption that we would still get that $4 billion in funding, they were also written to include a significant funding surplus. The surplus would bring in enough to cover and perhaps even exceed that $4 billion, according to Stackhouse.
Whole Washington, which has long been touting a switch to universal health care as a bulwark against the Trump-induced implosion of Medicaid, specifically called out the cuts as motivation for Wilson's endorsement in a press release.
"Wilson's endorsement comes with significant federal cuts to healthcare funding on the horizon," the organization wrote, adding, "[Its] timing sends a strong message that Wilson is serious about solving the shortcomings of private employer-based health insurance by establishing an alternative fully public healthcare system."
Amen. But as noble as Wilson's intention may be, there's a much more pragmatic reason she's endorsing this bill: She's got a campaign to win. To do that, she's firing off a press release approximately every 36 seconds pointing out how she rules and incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell merely governs. In this case, she rules because she has publicly endorsed the bills that would create the WHT and also signed the "Patients Over Profits" pledge, a promise not to accept more than $200 in campaign contributions from any private insurance or pharmaceutical companies. Harrell has yet to do either. Harrell's office did not respond to a request for comment.
Of course, making Harrell take a stance on it is somewhat of a moot point. The mayor of Seattle can't do much to pass a bill in the State Legislature. But what a mayor or mayoral candidate can do, and what I think Wilson is genuinely trying to do, is to make a ton of noise about it. I'm not much for "raising awareness" as activism, but in certain scenarios, it's just the thing.
"I think that the public has a role in demanding action and not accepting a response from legislators that basically says, 'Well, there's nothing we can do,'" Stackhouse said. "I think that the public needs to say that it is on the state to take action, and we know that there are things that you can do."
Most of the uninsured or underinsured people I know — people I work with in restaurants or run into at the local dive — don't know that. They hate the private health insurance system, they're constantly being dropped from employer plans or aging out of their parents' plan, or they're just plain in the dark about how to even get insured. Among the people I know who are insured, everyone is afraid to actually use their plan, because just about everyone has a deductible so high that one trip to urgent care would cripple them financially. Everyone hates private health insurance, but everyone accepts it as inevitable.
If people knew what was possible — and, make no mistake, the WHT is very financially and politically possible — I genuinely believe they would be outside with pitchforks and torches. Wilson, who commands a rather large public platform all of a sudden — beating an incumbent by nine points in the primary will do that — is using that platform to make sure people know exactly what's possible. However the rest of the campaign goes for her, I hope she keeps it up.
Got something *political* I should know? Tell me about it: Tobias.CB@SeattleEmerald.org.
Tobias Coughlin-Bogue is a writer, editor and restaurant worker who lives in South Park. He was formerly the associate editor of Real Change News, and his work has appeared in The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, Vice, Thrillist, Thrasher Magazine, Curbed, and Crosscut, among other outlets.
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