ESPC: The Medicaid Counter adds up Wyoming’s Losses

The Equality State Policy Center (ESPC) says the State of Wyoming’s decision against expanding Medicaid to cover more residents is costing the state economy millions of dollars each month.

Spokesman Dan Neal there is a counter on the ESPC website that provides an up-to-the-minute total of dollars foregone by the state since Jan. 1, 2014.  To see the counter click here.

Neal says 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).