At first, it looks good, as good as that tantalizing piece
of cheese on a mousetrap looks to the hungry rodent. That would be the news
that the Wyoming legislature is considering a “top to bottom” study of
healthcare in Wyoming.
Among lawmakers, studies have always been employed to avoid
doing what everyone already knows should be done. By now, everyone not a
Republican member of the Wyoming legislature knows what should be done. Hundreds
of studies have already been done. Medicaid should be expanded in Wyoming as it
has been in 37 states including all of those red and purple states surrounding us
except South Dakota.
The man placing the cheese on this trap led the fight to
keep Wyoming isolated from states that figured out Medicaid expansion solves
many of the problems all states share when it comes to providing access to and
controlling the costs of healthcare. State Senator Charlie Scott has proclaimed
himself the leading legislative expert on the matter, often using alternative
facts to sway colleagues too lazy to study the matter for themselves.
Now, Senator Scott says Wyoming needs another study. The
failure of Wyoming to do that which lawmakers and voters in all those other
states have done is a monument to a legislator who has been around too long.
Charlie Scott was first elected to the legislature when
Jimmy Carter was president of the United States. He has not aged well in the
job but has accrued a great deal of power to impact the process and he knows
the tricks of the trade. When Charlie proposes a “study,” what he’s really
planning is another cover up of the facts in order to validate his
long-standing opposition to Medicaid expansion.
When the Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Committee met
recently, he rolled out his plan for the study. He began by identifying the
problem as he sees it. Among them is the fact that many consumers travel to
other states for care, depriving Wyoming of that economic investment in our
healthcare infrastructure. Before his proposed study even begins, Scott has a
solution, which will undoubtedly find its way into the consultant’s list of
recommendations. He would “force” you to stay in Wyoming for medical care,
restricting your choices.
Studies of the impact of Medicaid expansion already answer
that question. The Kaiser Foundation analyzed 202 studies of what happens when
states expand Medicaid. Those states experience budget savings, revenue gains,
and economic growth.
Did you hear that? There have already been more than 200
studies. The “Charlie Scott Memorial Healthcare Study” will add nothing new.
Instead of relying on one lawmaker whose wrong-headed opinion is carved in
stone, perhaps the other 89 members of the legislature could read at least a
few of those studies and compare their results with Charlie’s averments.
In the years leading up to the passage of the Affordable
Care Act, Scott told his colleagues it would never become law. After it passed
he assured them the Supreme Court would find it unconstitutional. When the high
court found it was not unconstitutional, Charlie told them the feds would never
keep their promise to pay the lion’s share of the costs of expansion. Now that
the feds have kept that promise, even as the current president does his best to
ruin the ACA, Charlie falsely claims Medicaid expansion will bust our budget.
The experiences of those other 37 states demonstrate Charlie was as wrong about
that as he has been all along.
But, the man who would be legislator for life, wants two
more years to study the issue, two more years during which low-income families will
continue to suffer from a lack of affordable healthcare while Charlie Scott
uses taxpayer dollars to guide the results of a study to more of his
ill-considered and erroneous conclusions.
Charlie has set the trap and placed the cheese in front of
his colleagues. They have taken it before. The question is whether they learned
from prior mistakes.
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