Wyoming: Medicaid enrollment up 17% since COVID hit; 15K - 25K would gain coverage under #ACA expansion

I've once again relaunched my project from last fall to track Medicaid enrollment (both standard and expansion alike) on a monthly basis for every state dating back to the ACA being signed into law.

For the various enrollment data, I'm using data from Medicaid.gov's Medicaid Enrollment Data Collected Through MBES reports. Unfortunately, they've only published enrollment data through December 2020. In most states I've been able to get more recent enrollment data from state websites and other sources. Unfortunately, Wyoming isn't among them, though I've estimated January enrollment based on CMS's just-released Monthly Medicaid & Chip report (which use a slightly different methodology than the MBES reports).

Wyoming is one of 12 states which still hasn't expanded Medicaid eligibility under the ACA (13 if you include Missouri, whose voters expanded the program last year...but which the state legislature refuses to fund). The state legislature came very close to doing so at least twice this year...but it ultimately fell apart both times.

Non-ACA Medicaid enrollment in Wisconsin gradually dropped from a high of around 75,000 in late 2014 to just 55,000 or so in early 2020...and then COVID struck. Since then it's jumped sharply by over 17%, although the total has held steady at around 63,000 for the past few months.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation,Wyoming has roughly 15,000 uninsured residents who would gain coverage if they expanded the program, although the articles from the legislative debate earlier this year placed the total closer to 25,000.

As the smallest state in the nation, Wyoming only has 577,000 residents according to the 2020 U.S. Census. As of January 2021, around 64,000 of them were enrolled in Medicaid, or 11% of the state population.

AND WITH THAT, I'M DONE WITH MY 50-STATE MEDICAID ENROLLMENT ANALYSIS PROJECT (except for a national summary, which will come soon).