A recent WyoFile article highlights the plight of Baggs residents after the only medical provider in town closed shop. We feel for the community and for all the other small towns grappling with the changing landscape of living healthy lives in rural Wyoming. Opinion There is no doubt that providing health care is complicated — especially in small rural towns far from anything resembling an urban center. Reporter Madelyn Beck did a great job covering the layers of issues communities must contend with. We need to focus on improving health care access for the citizens who live in these communities. People in Baggs now have to rely on the town’s volunteer emergency service as a source of primary care, and we pray that nothing too serious happens to them or their children who can’t survive a 40-minute drive — one that is icy or even flooded during certain times of the year. Recruiting medical professionals is challenging across Wyoming, as even some of our larger communities lack providers for essential types of health care, like obstetrics. There is no silver bullet when it comes to fixing health care in Wyoming. However, there are systemic issues that state lawmakers can address. Like all businesses, health care clinics cannot operate indefinitely at a financial loss. When so many people lack health insurance, health care becomes more expensive and unaffordable for everyone. About 19,000 Wyomingites are currently stuck in the “coverage gap.” These are people who don’t have jobs that offer health insurance or do not qualify to get Medicaid and don’t make enough to get help paying for insurance. Wyoming legislators can and should close this coverage gap, especially when the federal government will pay 90% of the costs. Over the next five years, closing the coverage gap by expanding Medicaid could create 2,000 jobs and grow economic output by $1.5 billion here. A thriving Wyoming will be more attractive to recruiting and retaining providers to live and work in our great state. Montana closed its coverage gap in 2015, and it has been a lifeline in rural parts of that state. When people obtained insurance and health care providers got reimbursed for services rather than taking a loss, many providers expanded services. Some medical providers in very rural parts of the state have doubled the size of their health care facilities and workforce. Closing the coverage gap is not a silver bullet and will not bring back everything that Wyoming has lost, but it is a critical piece of the puzzle to stabilize our health care system and start rebuilding. We hope that in 2025, legislators will finally take action to make affordable, quality health care accessible to Wyoming families. Please join us in telling legislators and candidates it is time to close the coverage gap. Signed by the Healthy Wyoming Board of Directors: Richard Garrett, Pat Sweeny, Jan Cartwright, Brandon Rosty.  Healthy Wyoming is a nonprofit organization working with a broad coalition committed to finding solutions to improving healthcare in Wyoming. Learn more at healthywyoming.org. The post Expanding Medicaid would help address rural health care shortages appeared first on WyoFile .