An effort to determine the cause of Wyoming’s high health care costs won approval Wednesday from a Senate committee.
The Senate’s Labor, Health and Social Services Committee approved SF 67 on a vote of 4-1, sending it to the Senate for debate by the full body.
The bill would direct the governor’s office to study Wyoming’s health care system to determine why the costs to patients are higher than the national average.
Senator Charlie Scott said the Labor Committee, which he chairs, identified a dozen possible reasons why Wyoming hospitals charge their patients an average of $4,000 for care compared to the national average of $3,000.
“We hope that we’ll find some that we can fix and that will help bring our health care costs down, because they’re a problem for all of us,” he said.
The study would also address allegations that the federal Medicare system pays health care providers less for their services than what those services cost.
