Health-care costs and health-care insurance are on people’s minds in Wyoming. In late July, this forum hosted two writers on the pros and cons of Medicaid expansion. Their essays prompted more people to comment — and their comments made it clear that Medicaid expansion is only a piece of the puzzle that is frustrating us in Wyoming, where the numbers say we pay more for health insurance and more for health care than most other folks in the country.
So, here are three people taking a whack at the broader picture. Anne Ladd of Casper, who heads a Wyoming-grown employers’ group working on health care, lays out the case for axing the familiar “fee-for-service” way of paying for health care — and argues that employers and others in Wyoming can take this task on.
Annemarie Albins of Kemmerer, who works in her family’s small business, exposes the costs facing people in Wyoming. She brands health-care and health-insurance costs a crisis, shows its effect on business, and tells politicians to stop posturing and get to work.
And Sandy Shuptrine of Jackson, a former county commissioner who’s worked a bunch of jobs, says we should draw on our compassion to get Medicaid expansion adopted. Lawmakers must understand the majority sentiment favoring the federal program before we collectively tackle causes of high care and insurance costs.
Wyoming’s unique situation means the issues are something we’re just going to have to take on as a state. Wyoming’s a big place but there are not a lot of us — not so many that we can’t figure out and solve common problems. Join this forum, tell your stories and make your proposals. We’ll see whether this discussion will get us somewhere in taking the puzzle apart and defusing the health-care cost crisis.
— Pete Simpson