The Medicaid Counter adds up Wyoming’s losses

The State of Wyoming’s decision against expanding Medicaid to cover more residents is costing the state economy millions of dollars each month.

This counter provides an up-to-the-minute total of dollars foregone by the state since Jan. 1, 2014.

The counter is a conservative estimate of the dollars lost. It uses data from the September 2012 report completed by Milliman, Inc. for the Wyoming Department of Health. The study analyzes the effects of expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to a group who now cannot qualify for Medicaid no matter how poor they are: adults without children. Milliman’s analysis suggested a wide range in the number of possible enrollees. The Wyoming Department of Health picked a number inside that range and has said it expects that about 17,600 people would enroll for coverage under the expansion.

The counter shows federal dollars that would have flowed into the Wyoming economy to pay providers, such as doctors, nurses, hospitals, clinics, and testing facilities, for the health care that this new group of people needed (and still may need).

[The ESPC thanks Community Catalyst for preparing this graphic depiction.]

The Equality State Policy Center promotes accountability of state and local governments

Civic participation underlies work

The Equality State Policy Center is a progressive “think-and-do tank” that utilizes research, public education and advocacy to advance a cooperative program of work designed to establish and maintain accountability in Wyoming’s state government and to substantially increase public participation in and influence over public-policy decision-making.

The ESPC’s programs fall into three areas: government accountability (open government, campaign finance reform, lobbyist reporting); tax and fiscal policy (mineral severance taxes, property taxes, tax breaks or incentives, economic diversification); and Wyoming working families (access to health care, minimum wage, gender wage gap, worker safety, quality child care).

Across all these program areas, the ESPC provides trainings for citizen advocates and lobbyists to boost public participation and civic engagement in policymaking. We also work to organize low-income communities, especially those home to concentrated populations of American Indians and/or immigrants, to encourage them to raise their voices in the state’s policy circles.

The ESPC’s election-year voter education and mobilization campaigns make historically un- and under-represented voices heard where policy decisions are being made.