LETTER: Healthcare crisis

Published 1:30 am Saturday, March 21, 2026

Something rare is happening on the Peninsula: conservatives, liberals and progressives are naming the same failures in health care.

We all wait months for appointments, endure rushed visits, receive poor care and brace for confusing bills.

Better local leadership matters, yet even the best and most transparent board cannot overcome a nationwide system designed to put revenue ahead of health.

Capitalizing on care has produced a few ultra wealthy individuals and a national health care failure.

Local clinics now depend on discount carveouts, ever larger corporate chains and local tax levies to backfill nationwide failures.

Wasteful bureaucracy exists to feed billing systems and protect shareholder returns, not to make us healthier.

The promise that capitalism will make health care cheaper has failed empirically: costs have risen faster than wages, access is rationed by insurance type and ability to pay, pharmaceutical prices are outrageous and systems are rewarded for volume and billing complexity, not community health outcomes.

Olympic Medical Center, North Olympic Healthcare Network, Jefferson Healthcare and others operate inside a system that treats healthcare as a zero sum, for-profit enterprise.

Focusing exclusively on local budgets, CEOs and board leadership blurs the real issue: we are receiving lousy, expensive health care because of a national model that favors C-suite profiteering instead of guaranteeing care.

Nationwide, nearly half of rural hospitals are in the red, hundreds are at risk of closure, and more than 180 rural communities have already lost inpatient care.

The Peninsula is not unique; our healthcare crisis requires a national solution.

Alex Wilson

Port Angeles