Healthcare is a Human Right: Bring Community Medicine to King County

My name is Leo and I am a resident of Seattle. I am writing to you today as a decision-maker with the power to address a growing crisis in our community: the lack of affordable, accessible, and preventative healthcare. Thousands of Washingtonians are currently forced to delay treatment due to rising insurance premiums and catastrophic medical debt. I am leading an active online petition demanding that we transition our local healthcare strategy toward a universally accessible, community-driven model explicitly inspired by Costa Rica’s renowned healthcare system. Costa Rica consistently achieves world-class health outcomes and high life expectancy while spending a fraction of what we spend per capita in the United States. They do this through a universal public system known as the "Caja" (CCSS), which is built on two core frameworks that Seattle urgently needs.
Geographic Empanelment: Costa Rica organizes its population into localized health sectors. Every citizen is assigned to a neighborhood primary care clinic.

Multidisciplinary "EBAIS" Teams: Instead of waiting for people to get sick, integrated teams—consisting of a doctor, nurse assistant and community health worker proactively visit residents in their homes. They track metrics, administer vaccines, and treat root environmental and lifestyle causes of illness before they require expensive emergency room care.
Our current system in Seattle prioritizes corporate profits over patient outcomes. We rely on reactive emergency interventions rather than proactive community health. By implementing a localized public primary-care model in King County, we can dramatically lower long-term medical costs, eliminate racial health disparities, and ensure that healthcare is treated as a fundamental human right, not an employment based privilege.

I urge you to review our petition, meet with local healthcare advocacy coalitions like the Northwest Health Law Advocates (NoHLA) and WashingtonCAN and sponsor legislative initiatives that fund decentralized, neighborhood-level public health teams.

Thank you for your time, leadership and commitment to the health of all Seattle residents. I look forward to your response regarding how we can take actionable steps toward true health equity.