Entries by BetterWyoming

FIVE FACTS: The National Corporate Profit Recapture Act

There’s a lot of hype, misinformation, and outright lies surrounding a proposed corporate income tax in Wyoming. Here are five facts you need to understand.

Wyoming’s rural hospitals (and communities) would benefit from Medicaid expansion

Expanding Medicaid would help Wyoming’s struggling rural hospitals offset state budget cuts, provide mental health treatment, and attract and retain physicians to provide better services.

Expanding Medicaid would drive down people’s healthcare costs across Wyoming

When hospitals treat people who can’t afford to pay, they pass off those losses to everyone else, raising medical costs and insurance premiums statewide. This “uncompensated care” amounts to 6 percent of Wyoming hospitals’ total expenses. Medicaid expansion would cover those costs instead, helping hospitals and driving down the price of healthcare for everyone.

Medicaid expansion would lower Wyoming’s state healthcare spending

The State of Wyoming would pay for 10 percent of the cost of expanding Medicaid—roughly $9 million the first year. But other states’ experiences have shown that savings from the program more than offset the costs.

Wyoming’s economic development disasters

If Wyoming wants to diversify and develop its economy, it should focus its efforts on building communities where people desire to live, instead of desperately jumping on each pile-of-garbage “opportunity” that passes our way.

Revenue Committee votes to sponsor Wyoming Medicaid expansion bill during 2020 Legislative session

The committee’s support—and Wyoming’s worsening budget situation—gives Medicaid expansion the best shot it’s had in years.

Revenue Committee to consider non-tax proposal to bring hundreds of millions of public dollars to Wyoming

A bill to expand Medicaid would help close the state’s sizeable budget shortfall (and it would help poor people get healthcare, too).

Wyoming’s woeful response to coal’s collapse

As the coal industry falters, costing Wyoming hundreds of millions of dollars per year in lost revenues, state leaders struggle to act.

Wyoming Public Lands Day and our economic future

How “keeping public lands in public hands” is critical to diversifying and strengthening Wyoming’s economy.

Opponents of a proposed Wyoming corporate income tax say it’s unconstitutional. They’re wrong.

Naysayers who don’t want to admit they support Walmart over Wyoming schools are using a bogus technical argument.

Federal regulations created Wyoming’s coal industry

Wyoming politicians whine about the federal “War On Coal.” But no one was buying the Powder River Basin’s low-sulfur product until the Clean Air Act made it more affordable than its competitors.

Wyoming lawmakers have a “cultural bias” against accepting federal funds

When times are good, no one questions whether the Legislature’s refusal to accept federal funding is wise. But as Wyoming’s budget problems continue, those questions are beginning to arise.