💉 Checking the Pulse 06/10/26

Insurer’s requests: Health insurers offering coverage on the individual marketplace in Washington are requesting between 8% and 27% rate increases for 2027. The decision on rate increases is still a way away, but the Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner currently has a public comment period open while it considers the rate increases.

For this year’s plans, the state approved an average increase of 21%, as I reported last September. The following chart, published by the Office of the Insurance Commissioner, shows the requested rate changes for 2027 for individual health plans:

Speaking of marketplace coverage, in case you missed it, last month I reported on new data from the state that says about 2,000 fewer Whatcom and Skagit residents chose to purchase health insurance on the marketplace than last year.

Last November, I reported on Washington’s certificate of need law, and in the story asked if the law was helping PeaceHealth maintain its Bellingham monopoly. Now, nationwide, the state laws have allegedly become a focus of President Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission on the grounds that health care consolidation and anticompetitive practices are the source of higher prices. In a possible sign of what may be to come in other states, the FTC recently waded into Tennessee and urged the state to repeal its CON laws.

Maybe you’re one of the residents in town who’s opened your mailbox (roadside, not electronic) to find an invitation for your dollars to be donated to PeaceHealth. And if you haven’t, well, maybe that means you’ve never been a patient at the county’s lone hospital. This isn’t particularly new; during the hospital’s early days, when it was still run locally by Catholic Sisters on the ground and in the hospital halls in Bellingham, the nuns regularly pleaded with the public for financial support.

Nonetheless, PeaceHealth and its Bellingham hospital and affiliated foundation have been on a fundraising streak lately. In the last few months, the co-founders of Alpha Technologies, Fred Kaiser and Grace Borsari, donated $10 million, Peoples Bank donated $1 million and the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace — the Catholic religious order based in New Jersey that founded what became PeaceHealth — donated $1 million to the PeaceHealth system.

Kaiser, Borsari and Peoples Bank’s $11 million in total comes at a seemingly needed time for PeaceHealth’s Bellingham hospital, which is currently undergoing an estimated $336 million expansion, much of which PeaceHealth planned to cover with the “more than sufficient reserves” the hospital has. (The hospital announced Peoples Bank’s philanthropic investment this April, but said it was made in 2021. Both donations are going toward the ongoing expansion, the Peter Paulsen Pavilion, the hospital said.)

The Sisters’ $1 million endowment to the PeaceHealth system is for ministry leadership.

“This transformative investment will help ensure that PeaceHealth leaders continue to be formed and inspired by the organization’s Mission, Values and heritage for generations to come,” PeaceHealth said in a written announcement.

Some may wonder if the funds may be used to bring back or replace the hospital’s Bellingham-based Director of Mission Integration, a 16-year veteran of the Catholic hospital, who was laid off much to the surprise of colleagues in December.

Isaac Stone Simonelli, CDN’s investigative reporter who covered health care and PeaceHealth for more than two years in Bellingham until we hired a full-time health reporter, recently published a sensitive and detailed story on a small and under-resourced specialized unit in PeaceHealth’s Bellingham emergency department. The story — which includes allegations of sexual violence involving a minor — details the troubling outcomes that can arise from what providers claim are inadequate staffing levels in units caring for vulnerable populations.

InvestigateWest: Oregon Health & Science University in Portland had promising ambitions to expand its packed NICU, but now, after stalling, nurses say babies aren’t receiving needed care.

Lookout Eugene-Springfield: A U.S. judge sided with PeaceHealth in a lawsuit in which former hospital employees argued they were religiously discriminated against when they were placed on leave after foregoing COVID-19 vaccines.

The Brian Lehrer Show: David Remnick, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of The New Yorker for nearly three decades, recently discussed the state of local news, and in case you don’t have time to listen to the full segment, here are a few excerpts:

“It is obvious that newspapers that are smaller, or websites that are smaller have gotten smaller still all the time because of the diminishment of advertising, Google and Facebook, etc., etc., and as a result, in the old days, at their best those papers were what put pressure on power and it’s why the corrupt judge went to jail or the corrupt police commissioner got in trouble and without that pressure on civic power, state power, local power, you’re a poorer democracy.”

When asked if pressure on power from commentators replaces news, Remnick responded:

“No, because that’s commentary.” “What I value most of all in this picture is reporting, the discovery of material you did not know or points of view that you were unaware of, pictures of lives that you cannot see in your daily life. Reporting. And that’s hard work, it’s expensive, and it requires people of experience and skill; it’s not just gassing off at a microphone.”

“Reporting is something of extraordinary value in a democracy, and the less of it there is, the poorer we are.”