Seattle Times column on the impact on Washington State from Idaho's anti-public health policy: States as "laboratories of autocracy"

 Back when government was not about culture wars but helping people, there was the phrase "states as laboratories of democracy" referring to how many best practices adopted by the federal government, like Social Security, were pioneered by states acting innovatively.  (Although this at times was difficult for states because they didn't have the funding capacity possessed by the federal government.)

-- "A Progressive Call to Arms: Laboratories of Democracy," Harvard Political Review

In our heightened political environment, since the Obama Administration, Republican-led states have have used their ability within the federalism system to be resistant to change.  This was particularly pronounced with states being resistant to Medicaid expansion as a part of the Affordable Care Act ("State Politics And The Uneven Fate Of Medicaid Expansion," Health Affairs).

But also in a significant expansion of States suing the federal government over progressive policies.  (Similarly, Democratic run states frequently sued the Trump Administration over its practices.)

Now, states like Florida, Texas, Idaho, and Oklahoma on health care, immigration, election rules, abortion, public health, and other topic areas, are actively restricting rights, programs, and access.  

A new book out calls such states Laboratories of Autocracy ("How the states have become "Laboratories of Autocracy"," Salon).

The Seattle Times is a newspaper with center-right politics.  

So the column by Danny Westneat, "With COVID-19 and now abortion, WA is Idaho’s civilization. Can that hold?," is striking in how it describes the negative impact on Washington state health care systems from Idaho's backwards policies on covid 19 vaccination now, and likely anti-abortion policies in the future.

From the article:

The pandemic fractured America. It exposed, and then accelerated, the widening of some cultural and political chasms between the red areas of the country and the blue. 

The hope was that as the disease crisis subsided, these cracks might shrink back to something more resembling “normal.” But what if a larger seismic event has been triggered that now can’t be, or won’t be, stopped? 

I’ve been wondering this with respect to our neighboring red state, Idaho. 

Recently the news came out over there that during the delta phase of the pandemic last fall, Idaho in desperation had shipped more than 2,000 patients to Washington because its hospitals were so overwhelmed with unvaccinated COVID-19 sufferers that they had to ration medical care. 

“During this period, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee criticized Idaho’s leadership for ‘clogging up’ his state’s hospitals,” the Idaho Capital Sun reported. “Data from Idaho’s and Washington’s health departments back up this criticism.”

The news organization looked at patient-transfer data and found that, even as Idaho’s Republican political leaders resisted many COVID control measures and the state was among the worst for getting vaccinated, its sick residents were being exported for care to hospitals here, mostly in Spokane but also to both Harborview and the UW Medical Center in Seattle. 

This had a predictable ripple effect. “Today in my state, Washington citizens in many cases cannot get heart surgery, cannot get cancer surgery that they need, because we are having to take too many people of unvaccinated nature and unmasked, many of whom come from Idaho, and that’s just maddening frankly,” Inslee said at the time. ... 

I’m recounting this tale of political malpractice because, incredibly, it’s all about to be repeated — except with abortion this time. 

Idaho lawmakers just banned abortions there after about six weeks of pregnancy. They added one of those vigilante clauses that deputizes family members to sue doctors for damages. The law was stayed temporarily by the courts last week, but it’s similar to a Texas law that the U.S. Supreme Court allowed to stand. 

Already Idaho women are coming to clinics in Washington. A reproductive care clinic in Pullman reports 43% of its patients now are from Idaho. This past week, Planned Parenthood began renting space near the Idaho border in Oregon to get ready for women making abortion treks over from Boise. 

Idahoan demand for abortions here is expected to increase fourfold if the ban is upheld there, according to a forecast from an institute that studies reproductive health care.

Conclusion.  Increasingly, we are becoming two nations.  And it does not bode well.  Why is it that "state's rights" concepts are mostly being pushed not to improve the quality of people's lives but to diminish quality of life.