Healthcare

For many Wyoming residents, going out of state for healthcare is a familiar, if troublesome and expensive exercise. For folks without reliable transportation, huge distances to doctors can prove a serious threat when they need medical help.

The problems of mental illness, suicide, and substance abuse have plagued Wyoming communities for decades. Lawmakers have taken baby steps in recent years to address the issues, but according to most state residents, much more must be done.

Nearly half of people who responded to Better Wyoming surveys named affordability the number one healthcare issue for them and their families. Meanwhile, a new report confirms that the cost of care in Wyoming is nearly the highest in the nation. While other states enact laws to increase price transparency and decrease uninsured rates, Wyoming lawmakers have done little.

Everybody knows that Wyoming is a rural state, and so we can’t expect to have every kind of specialist. But we should be able to expect better than what we’ve got.

A new report demonstrates the healthcare and other challenges Wyoming’s seniors face, showing a rapidly aging state without the infrastructure needed to care for our 65+ residents. But the report also offers boatloads of data that can help policymakers find solutions.

Tired of dismal pay and awful conditions, workers for the company that provides ambulance services to Fremont County organized and took action. Their success winning better pay and jobs can be an inspiration for others around Wyoming.

Wyoming lawmakers—many of whom often claim to want to “save our children”—are standing by as a bureaucratic boondoggle strips 7,500 kids of their Medicaid health insurance.

In the first of a three-part series on barriers to opportunity that young people and families face in our state, Better Wyoming looks at the Legislature’s recent efforts—and failures—to address the growing problem of mental illness among Wyoming K-12 students.