Years ago, I interviewed a Canadian health-care broker whose job was helping his countrymen escape their own failing system.

When their “free” health care turned into “free to wait until you die,” he’d save his clients by routing them to doctors in the U.S. who’d accept cash and rescue their lives.

I asked him what advice he had for Americans. His answer terrified me.

“I hope the U.S. won’t do what we’ve done with health care,” he said. I thought his reasoning was that he didn’t want to see Americans suffer and die because of medical socialism. But that wasn’t it.

He said, “Because if you do, we’ll have nowhere to escape to.”

That stuck with me. We are Canada’s health care lifeboat.

Every bad system needs an escape hatch. Otherwise, you’re trapped.

Which brings me to the un-Colorado. Thank God for Wyoming.

From energy to fiscal policy, civil liberties to tech laws, Wyoming is becoming Colorado’s lifeboat. And it is so much more than sneaking north to buy fireworks and gun magazines.

Wyoming is becoming the gold standard, quite literally.

In December the state purchased some 2,312 ounces of physical gold. Understanding printing money out of nowhere and constant debt spending eventually ends badly, they’re planning ahead.

A new law requires 10% of their cash reserves be kept in physical gold. While the rest of the country debates modern monetary theory, Wyoming is quietly saying, “Maybe we should own something real.”

For those of us who see Bitcoin as digital gold (like gold, Bitcoin has a limited supply), Wyoming again has the advantage.

The Cowboy State was early in building a legal home for cryptocurrency companies. While Colorado chases away tech heavy-hitters like Palantir, Wyoming wants them.

They passed laws to clarify crypto is private property, legalized both crypto banking and even Decentralized Autonomous Organizations — companies run by code instead of shareholders. The state even considered their own stable coin.

Wyoming doesn’t want to repeat its biggest mistake. It invented the LLC, Limited Liability Corporations, in 1977 — and then watched Delaware steal the idea and become the business capital of America. They won’t let that happen with crypto.

Colorado’s political class has been on a decade’s-long crusade to make energy more expensive, less reliable, and — if we’re really lucky — occasionally available.

We’re shutting down always-available power to bet everything we have (and everything our kids have) on weather-dependent energy.

We’re regulating oil and gas out of existence like they’re chemical weapons. And doing it all with the moral certainty of a vegan Boulderite lecturing a lion.

Meanwhile, just north they’re doing something radical — keeping the lights on.

Wyoming is actively developing next-generation nuclear power, including advanced modular reactors backed by serious investment. They’re continuing to drill for oil and gas like a state that understands staying alive requires energy. Not slogans. Energy.

And here’s the punchline: as Colorado makes it harder to produce power, we’re going to need more of Wyoming’s.

They become the battery. We become the extension cord. We’ll virtue signal. They’ll power it.

Take data centers — the physical backbone of everything from AI to your email to the movies you stream — they require massive, reliable, always-on electricity. Not “when the wind feels like cooperating” electricity.

So where are they going?

Not Colorado. Denver Mayor Mike Johnson even bragged he would not allow data centers to be built in his city. What a man!

That’s like me saying I refuse to date leggy supermodels. None were going to date me anyway, so why not turn it into bravado.

They’re heading to places like Wyoming (data centers, not supermodels), where policymakers haven’t declared war on electrons.

But data centers will still be used by Coloradans. So, it doesn’t reduce energy use. It just exports the jobs, tax revenue and opportunity north.

And oh, they’re not chasing gunowners or entrepreneurs out of their state via laws that treat them like Nazi used-car salesmen with leprosy. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. Colorado still has incredible advantages — talent, beauty, lifestyle and a long history of innovation.

But advantages can be squandered. Canada already proved that.

Because if we didn’t have Wyoming, we might have nowhere to escape to.

Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute in Denver and hosts “The Devil’s Advocate with Jon Caldara” on Colorado Public Television Channel 12. His column appears Sundays in Colorado Politics.