CHEYENNE — Miners are in a special class when it comes to budgets.
They have their very own program, with a healthy pot of money.
But, like all healthcare programs, it is faced with increasing costs.
Currently, 6,900 former miners are registered members of this old club that originally was designed to help underground coal miners cope with the illnesses they picked up in the poorly aired, deep and dangerous holes in the ground.
The program was established in Wyoming’s Act of Admission in 1890.
When Wyoming was admitted as a state that year, the federal government granted 30,000 acres for a hospital to serve disabled miners who had worked in the state’s mines.
The money came from the land grants, like the Permanent Land Fund, so there was a stable source of income to pay healthcare costs for miners with heart and lung problems or hearing and musculoskeletal issues.
The Union Pacific Railroad, formerly a big user of coal for its locomotives, donated land for the miners’ hospital. It was in Rock Springs and morphed later into a county hospital.
In 2001 the Legislature put management of the fund and the program under the Wyoming Miners Hospital Board.
The board has two offices, one in Gillette and one in Rock Springs.
The miners' program, meanwhile, has received little public scrutiny over the years. When it got a hard look, it came from the governor and legislators in the bad budget deficit years, when they were scrambling for a fat pot of money.
They found it in the Miners’ Fund, but never could hack into it because of the constitutional origin of the program.
That tie ensures the Miners' Fund money is controlled by the state for one specific purpose; it cannot be spent on charitable efforts that are not controlled by the state.
So the corpus grew.
Today it totals $99,275,233, according to testimony last week before the Joint Appropriations Committee.
Miners getting benefits, meanwhile, include workers mining trona, bentonite, uranium, gravel and the like, and 14 coal mines in the Powder River Basin.
Angie Okray, executive director or the program, told the committee that about 56 percent of the registered members use the benefits of the program every year.
Qualified members are allocated $5,000 per year in medical assistance for various ailments associated with their mining careers.
To receive those benefits, a miner must have worked in the industry for 10 years and be a citizen of Wyoming.
“They worked to make Wyoming prosperous,” Okay said.
During the meeting, Okray was asked if anyone had ever proposed expanding the program to other groups, given the size of the corpus.
Yes, she said, there had been discussions, but the way the statute is written, only miners who worked day-to-day can benefit from the fund.
Later, in a telephone interview, Okray said a typical application is from a newly-retired miner who needs hearing aids and finds out that basic Medicare does not cover the cost. (Medicare Advantage options, however, can cover about half the cost.)
The miners' program does, though.
It provides up to $3,000 for a new set of hearing aids every five years, plus coverage for repairs.
A survey on hearing aids purchased by the miners between 2021 and 2025 shows $3,000 is too low.
The study found found Star Valley Health Audiology in Afton was the least costly at $2,666, with an excellent 5 rating, but only three responses.
The most expensive was $7,049 at High Country Hearing in Lander and Rock Springs, with 24 responses and a rating of 4.7.
The rest were mostly in the $4,000 and $5,000 range.
The entire list is available at the Wyoming Miners Hospital Board website at mhb.wyo.gov
Contact Joan Barron at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan.net
