 - The Wyoming Legislature’s Management Council has formed a new task force to study health insurance affordability in the state, at the suggestion of Wyoming Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander. ){kind=link}
(Cheyenne, WY) – The Wyoming Legislature’s Management Council has formed a new task force to study health insurance affordability in the state, at the suggestion of Wyoming Rep. Lloyd Larsen, R-Lander.
Larsen presented the proposal during a Management Council meeting April 1, explaining that, in his community, he has heard from constituents who are unable to afford to pay their monthly health insurance premiums.
“These are small business owners and professionals (who) don’t qualify … to get subsidies for their health insurance, which caps at 400 percent of the federal poverty level,” Larsen said, pointing, for example, to a local family of five, including an attorney and a certified professional accountant, that is currently paying $4,300 per month for health insurance.
Another local businessman with three small children pays $4,200 per month for health insurance, Larsen said – more than 20 percent of that family’s take-home pay.
“We’ve got these families out there – these small businessmen that are trying to grow our economy – and they can’t afford to buy their health insurance,” Larsen told the council.
Uncompensated care
In researching the issue, Larsen said he has heard from insurance industry representatives who say rates are higher in Wyoming because of hospital costs and pharmaceutical costs, which hospital officials say are driven up by the amount of care they provide without compensation in Wyoming.
That uncompensated care results from the high number of people in the state – about 10.5 percent – without health insurance, Larsen said.
Those residents tend to go to their local emergency room for treatment, he explained, and they often fail to pay their medical bills, so “the hospitals have to cover that.”
Eventually, the cost “comes back to those folks that (are) private pay or have insurance,” Larsen said.
State insurance?
The task force Larsen proposed this month would include members of the Wyoming House and Senate as well as representatives from relevant state agencies who could work together to study the issue and bring back policy recommendations to “help mitigate these high costs to our folks trying to (have) health care coverage.”
For example, Larsen said the task force could study ways to “allow everyone in the state to participate on the state (insurance) plan.”
“Those are … the type of things that we may want to look at,” he said.
Wyoming Rep. Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, who serves as Management Council Vice-Chair, said he has explored that prospect in the past and “ran into some real resistance from insurance companies” – but regardless, he said, “looking into this is prudent based on the issues that we’re seeing with insurance.”
“We need to look into this, ask some very hard questions, and try to look and see what options could or could not be available – not trying to undo business, but look at what other things we could maybe present to the people of the State of Wyoming and look at options,” Neiman said. “I think it would be a great discussion for everyone involved.”
The council voted in favor of forming the task force, and Wyoming Sen. Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, who chairs the Management Council, said appointments would be made “in the near future.”