Wyoming Wants State-Based Health Reform

...On health care, Republican Governor Matt Mead opposes the federal health reform law, like the presidential candidates, and Wyoming is one of 26 states that signed on to the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which will be argued before the Supreme Court later this month.

Yet Mead has recommended state-based proposals that sound familiar from the federal law. The governor’s strategy includes improving health IT throughout the state, support for the development of healthcare infrastructure and integration and to use the state’s purchasing power “to pay for value, not volume and align incentives for payers, providers and patients to do the ‘right’ thing,” said Elizabeth Hoy, the governor’s health policy adviser. He believes in the private sector to make improvements,

The governor wants to have “a Wyoming solution for healthcare reform and believes very strongly that this is not an issue that we can ignore, but it’s an issue that we need to work on and move the ball forward,” she said during a recorded town hall meeting.

The state legislature has voted to extend to 2013 consideration about how Wyoming would put in place a health insurance exchange, the online marketplace for individuals and small businesses to shop for health coverage. Mead also wants to make certain that Wyoming can put forward its own solution and has sponsored town hall meetings about the exchange...