Download the full Policy Note and read the letter by Phil Dyer here

Letter by Phil Dyer, former state Representative, 5th Legislative District and former Chairman of the house Health Care Committee

Introduction by Roger Stark, MD, FACS

Recently The Seattle Times featured an article that purported to describe lessons policymakers today could learn from Washington state’s failed effort to enact health care reform in the 1990s.  The front-page article relates that, because the Republican-controlled legislature repealed some parts of the law and kept others, the entire reform effort collapsed.  Former state representative Phil Dyer, who at the time served as Chairman of the House Health Care Committee in the legislature, disagrees.  He notes that Republican amendments to improve the law were rejected, that the 1990s reform was passed with one-party control, and that the article fails to tell the whole story.

Mr. Dyer finds that, based on his direct experience, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 failed nationally for the same reason state-level reform in Washington failed in the 1990s; the inability or unwillingness of the party in power to work with the other party in passing reasonable, balanced and durable public policy.

However, unlike our recent national experience, Mr. Dyer explains that, years later, when the inevitable collapse of Washington state’s individual insurance market was imminent, both parties and the Democratic governor were able to come together and pass workable repairs that kept the state’s health insurance market functioning.  Details are provided in former Representative Dyer’s letter to the editor to The Seattle Times, which is below.