Senator John Barrasso visits Worland, pledges to help hospitals and small businesses

WORLAND - U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) was in Worland for the Memorial Day services on Monday, May 25.

In a brief but wide-ranging conversation following services, Barrasso expressed concern for the plight of local small businesses that may have hit a brick wall in their efforts to obtain Coronavirus Emergency Loans or other types of special federal relief funding to help small business survive. He suggested that such businesses should give his office a call. "Whenever we hear that somebody has had trouble, we want to help them." Barrasso said. "We have people on our staff who do that."

Barrasso noted that more than 11,000 Wyoming small businesses had received such funding, with an average loan of around $100,000.

Barrasso, who is a physician, also spoke of his intense concern for rural hospitals. "Our focus has been to make sure that the rural hospitals, which are suffering economically – and their margins are very thin – would be held harmless from shutting down," Barrasso said.

Beyond the serious economic implications, Barrasso also noted a tragic irony of COVID-19 epidemic planning. By essentially shutting down rural Wyoming hospitals during the coronavirus crisis, awaiting a surge of COVID-19 patients that in most facilities did not materialize, there may have been harmful consequences to patient health overall.

Barrasso explained, "In this focused effort to prevent the spread of coronavirus by shutting down elective procedures in hospitals – mammograms, colonoscopies, cardiac stress tests – we may have delayed the diagnosis of things that would have allowed for early treatment, and early cure."