I recently attended the Wyoming Healthcare Policy Summit with Faith Jones, who is currently Vice-President of the Wyoming Nurses Association. The summit was a comprehensive, intense analysis of rural healthcare hosted by the Wyoming Medical Society. Ten percent of Wyoming is without healthcare and six rural hospitals are at risk of closing altogether. When rural hospitals close, the three hardest hit groups are the ranchers, the small business owners and nonprofits. We must invest money in Wyoming people and healthcare and bring back the ACA subsidies.

The U.S. Department of Education has also recently excluded nursing from its internal list of “professional degree” programs which drops the annual federal graduate student loan limit for advanced nursing degrees from $50,000 to $20,500. This hurts both students and healthcare facilities even more.

In Wyoming, 81% of our voters believe the cost of health care is too high. I will work with other legislators in a bipartisan manner to find a solution to this problem.