SILVERDALE — Sitting in his living room, wearing a cannula in his nostrils, Al Pinkham watches the evening news while recovering from a bad case of flu.
During his 24-year career in the Navy, Pinkham never worried much about health care. He knew that the military would look after him, as well as his wife and children, providing exactly “what a sailor needed” to focus during long deployments.
Yet as a retiree, Pinkham, 78, has almost no relationship with the military health system he once relied on. His latest illness was treated at St. Michael Medical Center and he no longer goes to Naval Hospital Bremerton, a once thriving military hospital that has served the West Sound in some form for more than a century …