With health care access under attack, Wyoming lawmakers should be seeking solutions

Wyoming residents are facing the steepest increases in health care costs in decades. 

So you would expect state lawmakers to focus their time and energy on ways to help — and better yet, to find solutions that improve health care access and affordability in our state. Instead, a recent legislative subcommittee meeting focused on dissecting the Wyoming Department of Health budget to find suspected “hidden” funds to cut or redirect.

It was abundantly clear during the meeting that after decades of budget cuts, the health department has been incredibly creative in finding efficiencies to preserve essential services to our state’s most vulnerable populations. Cuts to the department, while costs are going up, would mean closing clinics just as thousands are about to lose insurance. That would be a terrible decision that would harm individuals and the health care system we all need to stay healthy. 

Right now, the health department spends less than 8% of its budget on administration. The remaining funds go directly to services for impoverished children, low-income pregnant women, veterans, children and adults with disabilities, people with mental illness and elderly folks who need support. The subcommittee is learning that the department’s budget is closely studied and justified every budget year, and there is no hidden waste to produce great savings. The department is doing its best to be responsible stewards of state resources and maintain critical health care services that Wyoming communities need.

But the subcommittee is not exclusively focused on cuts. The Joint Appropriations Committee requested these five additional days of meetings, in part to look at ways to increase the Developmental Disability waivers program budget and to consider how to use funding Wyoming will likely receive as part of the federal Rural Health Transformation fund.

At Healthy Wyoming, we absolutely agree that the Department of Health can justify additional funding to increase access to Developmental Disability waivers and decrease the length of time that families must wait to get support for their loved ones. But it should not come at the cost of cutting other programs. We believe that mothers — of all incomes — deserve to have access to birthing centers and OB-GYN services within a reasonable distance; that low-income older adults deserve to live out their lives with dignity; and children living in poverty deserve food, shelter and an education.

In failing to expand Medicaid to low-income adults, the state has missed out on a decade’s worth of federal resources, new health care jobs, financially secure health care clinics and boosted economic activity. Meanwhile, the existing Medicaid programs cover critical health care for thousands of eligible Wyoming citizens.

This fall, as open enrollment for Affordable Care Act marketplace coverage begins Nov. 1, millions of families face the threat of soaring premiums. Unless Congress acts, the premium tax credit enhancements, which have made marketplace coverage more affordable and contributed to historic coverage gains, will expire — forcing Wyomingites to pay premiums that could increase by tens of thousands of dollars.

For example, a 60-year-old couple making $82,000 would see their annual premiums for a benchmark plan increase from $6,970 to more than $44,392.

We welcome funding from the Rural Health Transformation fund included in the Big Beautiful Bill, although it falls short of what is needed to ensure stability for rural health care in the long term. It has limits, is temporary and cannot be an excuse to cut health department services.

During one point in the meeting, Chair Rep. Ken Pendegraft, R-Sheridan, shared a personal story about his experience being born with a cleft lip and palate and raised the question, when it comes to accessing care, “Who is more deserving?” 

We at Healthy Wyoming think that question misses the point. Every Wyomingite is deserving of access to affordable health care. Any cuts to the Wyoming Department of Health will mean pulling support out from under someone. Instead of deciding who should lose, we suggest legislators focus on finding solutions to improve health care access and affordability for all Wyomingites. 

The next subcommittee meeting is on Oct. 14.

The Healthy Wyoming Board is:

Chair Brandon Rosty and directors Jan Cartwright, Richard Garrett, Marguerite Herman and Patrick Sweeney.