Health care reform a winner for rural America

If you want to see just how badly broken America’s health care system is come to the country. Be careful during your visit, however, because rural America—where just nine percent of the nation’s doctors serve 17 percent of its citizens scattered across 80 percent of its geography—is not an ideal place to find medical care. It’s an even worse place to get medical insurance, according to an April 2009 report issued by the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Neb. In fact, if you want to put a face on the need for Congress and the White House to reform the nation’s health care system look no further than the weathered ones of farmers and ranchers. The reasons for reform are evident, says Jon Bailey, director of rural research and analysis at CRA. Bailey co-authored the report with colleague Julia Hudson and Dr. Joe Blankenau, a professor of politics at Wayne State College in Nebraska. First, he notes, rural Americans need medical care insurance more than urban counterparts because their demographic—older, poorer and less educated—means greater use of the health care system. Insurance to cover that need, though, is growing problem in rural America. “Overall, 72 percent of the urban non-elderly have insurance through employers,” explains the CRA report. It’s 61 percent for rural non-elderly. Most of the fall-off can be traced to jobs. Rural America is dominated by small business and “people working for small business are twice as likely to be uninsured,” says the Center for Rural Affairs. Moreover, rural business is usually low-wage business, the key reason many locate in rural areas. And a big key to that low wage is not providing medical insurance. “Workers making about $7 per hour are three times more likely to be uninsured” than ...

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Tags: Medical Insurance News

This entry was posted on Monday, May 25th, 2009 at 10:42 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.