The state wa
s waiting on the election results to make its decisions, and now it must act fast.
Officials in Wyoming were waiting to make their health care reforms decisions until after the presidential election results were released, so that they could know that they were basing their choices on a system that would continue to be in tact into the future.
Now that they know that President Obama has won the election, they must make their choices soon.
One of the major issues that the state officials will need to face is whether or not a Medicaid expansion will be a part of the health care reforms that they choose to implement. The decision from the Supreme Court in June gave the states the authority to decide whether or not they wish to expand their coverage.
Those health care reforms would add thousands to the entitlement for Medicaid.
However, the states must also contend with the fact that this would increase the cost of the program by millions of dollars. This makes the choice more challenging than simply wanting to help people by broadening the entitlement guidelines.
The governor of the state, Matt Mead, will be working with the lawmakers in Wyoming in order to make up for the delays that they have made to the decision making process since last year. This was a deliberate strategy to avoid investing time, money, and resources into programs that may have been reversed if Republican Mitt Romney had won the election and repealed the health care reforms.
Mead explained that “I think it was difficult for a lot of people to make decisions because Romney’s position was he wants to repeal and replace it.” He also added that “And (it was a matter of) how much time, money and effort we wanted to spend if that was going to happen.”
Now that the election has ensured that the health care reforms will be going into full effect in 2014, the state needs to make some fast decisions in order to confirm which of the optional parts of the law it will be accepting. This includes the expansion of Medicaid eligibility, as well as other issues such as whether the state or federal government will be running its insurance exchange program.
