Washington Health Freedom Washington introduced a safe harbor exemption bill in January 2009, HB1861, by Representative Chase, to protect consumer access to all natural health care practitioners who do not have state mandated licenses. The Chairman of the Health Care and Wellness Committee has refused to give the bill a hearing but advocates are still working to pass the bill. WA is unique in that they currently have legislative intent stating that the state does not expect all health care practitioners to be licensed. However, the intent has not held up in cases against the unlicensed practitioners. Health freedom is under major attack in WA. At least seven licensed and unlicensed practitioners that provide alternative health care have been investigated in the past 2 years. In response to the investigation, activists have formed organizations with the goal of changing the laws.
Health Freedom Washington (HFW) has a goal specifically to protect unlicensed practitioners. The group successfully introduced safe harbor exemption bills in both Senate and House SB 6034/HB 2266 in 2007 session, but because they did not launch until late in session, the bills did not move out of Committee. HFW does not support mandatory registration of unlicensed practitioners and worked hard to oppose a mandatory registration bill for unlicensed practitioners that was introduced by another group.
In addition, the 2009 session had a very negative bill for health freedom advocates in Washington. Their existing licensed Naturopathic Physicians introduced a bill to oversee unlicensed practitioners starting specifically with colon hydrotherapists. This was considered an affront to the safe harbor exemption health freedom bills and incredulous by health freedom advocates who are now opposing the regulatory colon hydrotherapy bill.
Washington
Sunshine Health Freedom State Coordinator
Position available
Health Freedom Washington
Healthfreedom.wa@qmail.com
