Letter to the Editor: 2/9/2026 Maternity deserts, Medicaid cuts a reality for Wyoming mothers

Dear Casper,

Wyoming legislators obsess over protecting the unborn while gutting nearly every support system for children who are already here. They are planting seeds and then refusing to tend to them.

In October of 2025, the Joint Labor, Health, and Social Services Committee voted against increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates for obstetricians. In Wyoming, one in three births is covered by Medicaid. In the past five years,  four Wyoming hospitals have shuttered their Labor and Delivery Services because of the high costs and low reimbursement rates. The proposal to increase the Medicaid rate for obstetrics was supported by hospital associations, the Department of Health, and numerous health care providers. Asking pregnant people to give birth in a maternity desert is forcing people to plant a garden and then making sure they don’t have any land.  

Seeds need water to grow and thrive, and kids need health insurance. In the first round of the Wyoming Joint Appropriation Committee discussions of 2026, they discussed reducing funds for Medicaid. In 2024, children made up for 63.3% of medicaid enrollees. Cutting funding for Medicaid leaves these children and their families vulnerable. Asking people to have more babies while refusing to make their medical care affordable is unacceptable.

In Wyoming, one in five children lives with food insecurity. In June 2025, during a Joint Labor, Health, and Social Services Committee meeting some of the legislators asked why they should continue to fund programs like SNAP and WIC. These programs are meant to support babies and children who are earthside, and yet the Freedom Caucus wants to cut these resources from the children in our communities. One legislator openly worried that providing these resources would mean allowing people to be “too comfortable” in their poverty.

For two years in a row, elected officials have chosen not to participate in a federal food program that helps feed children over the summer. Children in Wyoming communities are going hungry, and yet we have legislators demanding that Wyomingites have more babies? 35,000 children statewide receive free or reduced lunches. We are witnessing our lawmakers knowingly taking nutrients away from our children, from the seeds we are tending to. 

Children need a place to grow — and for nearly all Wyoming kids, that place is public school. According to Public School Review, ninety-seven percent of K-12 students attend public schools in Wyoming. In 2025, the Wyoming legislature made many questionable decisions regarding public education. It passed the Steamboat Legacy Act, which siphons public money away from public schools. They cut property taxes, which is fundamentally how we pay for our public schools. In the life of our seeds, education is the sunlight that allows our children to grow, and yet the Freedom Caucus keeps voting for darkness.

Planting a seed is only the beginning. We have to tend to the seeds; plants need to be invested in season after season to be successful. It’s the same with babies and children. The lawmakers who demand that every pregnancy be carried to term are slashing the programs that keep our children growing. Wyoming’s legislators, and the Freedom Caucus specifically, need to remember that real responsibility means tending to the fields long after the planting is done, just as we tend to our children long after they are born.

Writing in solidarity for a better Wyoming future,

Betsy Erickson

Casper

Oil City News