Robby Stern's six years working for health care reform earns him some timely recognition as a Change Agent. But even if he never lifted a finger on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of fellow Washingtonians who lack coverage, we should have put his mug here a long time ago. He earned it in 1998, winning an initiative campaign to hitch the state's minimum wage to the cost of living -- a policy that's set precedent around the country. And way back in 1969, for getting himself suspended from the UW law school after United Fruit Co. found the campus a surprisingly inhospitable place to recruit bright young college grads. Suspension: that's the price of effective rabble-rousing.
Retiring in May 2008 from the Washington State Labor Council -- which followed some time in private practice and in the trades as a union pipefitter/welder with Local 32 -- Stern is chair of the Healthy Washington Coalition, a statewide group eclipsed, just in the last year, by a national reform campaign that appears to be on the threshold of success. Reform, says Stern, "will change the very fabric of our society" in ways not seen since the advent of Medicare in 1965. Even so, Healthy Washington will play a key role in holding government accountable: for example, by making sure it picks up the thousands being arbitrarily dropped from the state's Basic Health Plan, and pushing for new sources of tax revenue to make better, broader care a reality. So expect to hear more from the Healthy Washington Coalition and from Robby Stern. He's retired but not at rest.