Mexican American Migrant Farmworkers and Health Care in Wyoming: An Analysis of the Wyoming Medicaid Policy as it Pertains to Migrant Families

Abstract

The migrant lifestyle has posed difficulties for health care providers over the course of this century. The constant relocating and the poverty migrants face create a variety of health care problems. Migrant workers must be targeted and sought out by migrant health programs across the nation so as to ensure the health of our nation’s agricultural laborers. In Wyoming, Mexican American migrant farmworkers return annually to work in the sugarbeet fields in the Big Hom Basin. The Wyoming Migrant Health Program actively seeks out these migrant workers in order to provide basic health care to both the workers and their families. Yet the Migrant Health Program meets only their basic health care needs. In order to ensure that migrants do not slip through the health care cracks, Wyoming must make Medicaid accessible to qualifying migrants.