In spite of its decline, the CST still manages to put out a really good issue every now and then. This Sunday's is one such example, full of economic news.
Much of what isn't cheery, and some of which is quite surprising. Although, if you follow us here at all, much of this will have a familiar ring, for good or ill.
So, the roundup.
1. Paying for not getting the Feds to pay for Medicaid Expansion.
American volunteer ambulance in France, 1915. Medicine has certainly improved, but the costs are getting difficult to deal with.
Wyoming now faces a $30,000,000 Medicaid shortfall and its going to get worse. This comes in the wake of Wyoming declining Medicaid expansion in the late stages of the Obama Administration which would have garnered the state something like $100,000,000.
No matter what a person thinks of programs like this, I could never grasp why we turned down the money. But we did. I know the Governor was having a hard time with that too.
Well, the economic chickens on this one appear to have come home to roost, or are at least headed that way. Part of the overall mess, right now, of health care and what we're going to do nation wide.
This gets at the heart of a somewhat unrelated matter (which we have a thread in the hopper about) which is what to do about the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare". Depending upon who you listen to, it's either about to collapse or its not. It doesn't seem to be working super well, but then how could it really? Given that it was sort of a bondo and bailing wire approach to the whole topic to start with. Truth be known a nationwide, forced insurance system with private carriers was unlikely to work and now we're not too sure what to do.
We do know, however, that once benefits are extended their nearly impossible to take away, so nobody wants to really contemplate that. That provided the basic philosophical basis for not wishing to signed up for expanded Medicaid, but the problem is that the bills were coming anyway. Now we don't really know what to do about that.
I don't know what the solution to this is, but this seems like a train that we saw coming before it hit us.
2. Coal is stable, at a new normal, which is lower than pre bust.
Coal burning (maybe, it could be oil by this time) coal train, West Virginia, 1938.
I would have predicated this, particularly as the paper reports that the reasons for this a pre bust decline. That is, it's not due to the Federal government, it's due to demand.
The good news is, for Wyoming, that its not still sliding. But that's only marginally good news as it also like means that the hoped for return to a super heated expanding industry is likely to remain a hope, and nothing more. New revenues, therefore, are going to have to come from somewhere else. Coal will still be with us, but it'll be with more in the fashion it was in earlier eras. But we budgeted in the state like it was going to be the economic powerhouse forever.
On the other hand, we started budgeting with coal prior to the latest super rosy predictions and that worked well. What that means is that we might simply have to return to leaner economic times, which weren't all that lean, really.
3. Wyoming to subsidize air travel?
"The air liner "Hannibal" on the Alexandria aerodome"
In a really surprising story the Wyoming Department of Transportation is advancing a plan to contract with air carriers in Wyoming the same way that airlines do with regional carriers., this story coming in the wake of Allegiant saying "Tally Ho!" to Casper. That is, basically, they'll buy any seats the regionals don't fill. It's an ambitious and surprising plan. It basically accepts the reality of the situation, that being that Wyoming is too small of market, in the modern world, to support much air travel. Casper has what little there is, and even its services are being reduced. Part of this is fueled, as the paper notes, by a new regulatory requirement that pilots for commercial carriers have a much increased number of hours in order to take that job. This has resulted in a pilot shortage, which was coming on anyhow, and it's also meant that its more expensive to operate in the small venues. A law of unintended consequences thing, sort of.
This plan would have to get past the legislature, of course, and I'm somewhat skeptical that in the current political environment that will occur. The paper interviewed Chuck Grey with the nearly predictable result of Grey, who is a far right conservative fellow traveler with the Wyoming Liberty Group, not being keen on the idea. The surprising part of that was that Grey wasn't as hostile to the idea as I would have expected, even though he doesn't support it. Grey told the Trib; "We need to continue to look at the current situation and purse competition".
That isn't going to work, actually. Regional air travel is limited here as its not economic. Chuck feels the solution is to attract Southwestern which. . .isn't going to happen.
I can see the opposition to this plan and what it will entail already. "Socialism!" But the fact of the matter is that the American transportation infrastructure is already government supported, with the except of the railroads. The poor railroads have to make it on their own for some reason but this isn't true of other things. American highways and streets are not, after all, privately owned. When you drive into your subdivision you likely don't pay a toll to the homeowners association, and there isn't a Wyoming State Turnpike Company that owns the highways. Nope, all subsidized. Indeed, we're so used to this that we don't even consider the inequities in the funding of highways.
Looked at that way WYDOT's plan is really farsighted. The lack of intrastate air travel has long been known to be something that hurts Wyoming's economy. The airports are barely making as it is. Some, like Natrona County's, are real gems. What WYDOT is proposing isn't really any more radical than what the state and the towns are already doing with wheeled transportation.
4. No wheat.
Wheat in Maryland, yes Maryland, 1944.
In a surprising article, no doubt picked up from a wire service, the Trib informs us that there wasn't a lot of wheat planted this year. Just too much on the market already, so farmers have switched to other things, like chickpeas.
5. Gillette admits it has two high schools
Craig Colorado's 1920 high school athletic teams.
Not in the Tribune . . . well it probably is but I don't read the sports section, Gillette was finally forced to admit that its two "campuses" were two separate high schools and so now it fields two sets of sports teams. I'm told that the schools will have boundaries, like most do, that will determine which you go to, but right now you could elect which means that all the good football players, I'm told, went to one school. I'm not sure which that is, but the other one played down here last week and it was a complete blowout in favor of NCHS.
I don't even follow football, but I know that, so it was truly a blow out.
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