It's time to get on board with Medicaid expansion

Now that everyone knows Obamacare is "the law of the land for the foreseeable future," there is no valid reason for the Wyoming Legislature to oppose it.

By D. Reed Eckhardt

One could always hope -- I suppose -- that Wyoming's lawmakers are paying attention. But I'm not holding my breath.

In the wake of the collapse of Trumpcare, legislators in Kansas last week offered their poorer residents health-care insurance through the Medicaid expansion outlined in Obamacare. Last year this idea was anathema. Indeed, the Kansas Senate even tossed one of its own off a key health care committee when she dared to suggest supporting the idea.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead came late to support Medicaid expansion.

That's right, one of the reddest states on the nation's political map now has seen its Legislature offer an additional 150,000 of its residents help through Medicaid, supported with funding from the federal government.

Now, it is true that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has vetoed the measure. But that does not mean his legislature is any less persuaded that the idea is a good one. And other states across the nation are climbing on board. Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina also are looking at passing expansion, the Washington Post reports. All three have been stalwarts against it in the past.

It is the failure of Republicans in the U.S. House to "repeal and replace" Obamacare that has created this new momentum. Even House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., admits that the Affordable Care Act "is now the law of the land for the foreseeable future." So states that formerly refused Medicaid expansion for fear -- or hope -- that Obamacare would collapse are looking at joining the 31 others that have moved forward to care for their people.

This is long overdue. It is tiresome to hear politicians who either get (thanks to their government positions)  -- or can afford -- health care for themselves and their families, deny it to the working poor. Of course, many of the neediest needy get support from Medicaid, and others who make a little more money can get it through Obamacare with the aid of federal subsidies. But those who fall in the middle of those two groups are forced to go it on their own, usually ending up in emergency rooms even for a common cold and then failing to pay their bills. This care is then funded by you and me (if we have insurance) through increased medical costs and higher health insurance premiums.

There are about 20,000 Wyomingites who find themselves in this gap. They have been dissed by their legislators, who treat them as if they choose to live in poverty and who pretend that if these people would just get jobs, they would not need expansion. Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of these people work; they are our family, friends, and neighbors who take care of us in restaurants or greet us at Walmart. It is an insult that only lawmakers who never have been without health insurance or without enough money to keep them fat and sassy would deal out.

One of those was Gov. Matt Mead, who opposed Medicaid expansion to gain reelection in 2014. Then he came to the party in support of it once he had been returned to office. Unfortunately, that was too little too late, and the expansion, which had failed in previous years, was not even discussed in the most recent session of the Legislature.

Part of the problem is that Mead and others who support expansion wait too long to get the ball rolling. And the governor has been unwilling to climb onto the bully pulpit to encourage state residents to put pressure on their lawmakers to take care of the needy among us. It is going to take a concerted effort, and Mead has been unwilling to fight for expansion even after saying he supports it.

Now that Obamacare is not going away, this would be a good time for the governor to build a coalition and start talking about it again. Yes, the next session is more than nine months away. But if Mead and others would begin talking about it now, and keep talking about it, and keep talking about it, then maybe things would change. Certainly the lawmakers' argument that the state is going to be left holding the bag when Obamacare fails no longer holds water.

Yes, Wyoming is facing its own fiscal crisis. But that only means that more people are going to need help from the expansion. The money is there, squirreled away in the rainy day fund or some other coffee can or being diverted into the Permanent Mineral Trust Fund. It's astonishing -- but no surprise -- how quickly the Legislature can rush to help the minerals industry when it cries for support. How nice it would be to see, just one time, similar concern for the state's needy from the governor and his legislative cronies.

D. Reed Eckhardt is the former executive editor of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.