Sifton Neighborhood Association

Ensuring Health Care is Affordable and Accessible

Rep. Deb Wallace, 17th District

Health care costs and prescription dugs are forcing more and more people to choose between medicines and basic necessities. Even if you don’t fit into that category, you likely do feel the burden of rising health care costs. Just like your family’s budget, the rising cost of health care is taking a bigger bite out of the state’s budget as well.

R HB 1219 Buying in Bulk: Lowering Prescription Drug Costs
This bill creates a prescription drug purchasing consortium that allows citizens, businesses and local governments to join the state in negotiating cheaper bulk-rate drug prices from pharmaceutical companies. The state estimates the plan will help 81,000 senior citizens and 120,000 uninsured Washingtonians of working age buy more affordable medicines. I am proud to be a sponsor of this legislation.

How your 17th District Reps. voted: Dunn-Nay Wallace-Yea

R HB 1194, HB 1316 & HB 1168
Buying Prescription Drugs from Canada
In Washington, people pay twice or three times the price for the same medication they can buy in Canada. Modern medicine means modern prescription drugs – and these three bills to give citizens cheaper prescription medicine.

HB 1194 is focused on giving taxpayers the most for their money. Washington State spends $1 billion a year on prescription medicines that can cost up to 80 percent less in Canada. I’m proud to be a sponsor of this legislation.

How your 17th District Reps. voted: Dunn-Nay Wallace-Yea

HB 1316 gives private pharmacies the ability to buy medicines, wholesale, from Canada.

How your 17th District Reps. voted: Dunn-Nay Wallace-Yea

HB 1168 will allow Canadian pharmacies to be licensed by the Washington State Department of Health, should allow for more competition in the drug market, driving down costs for consumers. I’m proud to be a sponsor of this legislation.

How your 17th District Reps. voted: Dunn-Nay Wallace-Yea



R HB 1828 Mental Health Parity
House Bill 1828 requires insurance companies to cover mental health services at the same levels as medical or surgical services on many plans. Nearly two-thirds of House members (64-33) joined together to pass the bill after hearing that one in every five Americans will experience severe anxiety or depression at some point, while only a fraction will get treatment.

Many mental illnesses are preventable and treatable, and, in the long run, we will save our state money as fewer mental health patients enter our hospital emergency rooms or tax our criminal justice system.

R ‘Kid Care’
Hundreds of thousands of jobs disappeared and our Washington’s once-strong economic security has eroded in recent years. As Washington workers have struggled to maintain health care coverage, their families have suffered – especially children.

In 2002, more than 70 percent of uninsured children lived in families with at least one full-time worker. Uninsured children are three times as likely to have an unmet health care need and much more likely to miss critical time in the classroom. The disadvantage is obvious.

Our plan expressly sets the goal of ensuring all Washington kids have affordable health care coverage by 2008. We call it “Kid Care,” a name and a notion that have been successful in other states. The bill directs the state Health Care Authority to examine approaches other states have taken to achieve near universal coverage of children. HCA will issue its report by December 1, 2004, in time for action in the 2005 Legislature.

Email us
Wallace.Deb@leg.wa.gov