Affordable Health Care and Rural America
Last month we announced a multi-part series, beginning in July, which will look into the Affordable Care Act and what hope reforming America’s health care system holds for the Midwest and Great Plains and, in particular, those of us that reside in and around America’s rural communities.
First and foremost, we entered this fray because the 60 million people in rural America have much to gain, and much to lose, in any debate over reform of the health care system. Rural America presents a unique set of challenges for health care reform. Rural people have less access to health networks and health care providers, greater rates of disability and chronic diseases and higher use rates of all public health care programs.
Health care is also a major barrier to rural economic development that creates genuine opportunity and reduces poverty. Microenterprise and small business development is the most effective path in many communities for low- and moderate-income rural people to pull themselves out of poverty. But if small entrepreneurs cannot gain affordable access to health care for themselves or their employees, that path out of poverty is blocked. Any hope of building genuine economic opportunity for struggling rural Americans through entrepreneurship must be accompanied by reforming the health care system in a way that benefits both small business owners and their employees.
At the outset of the debate over the Affordable Care Act, the Center for Rural Affairs identified the following issues as crucial rural elements in the health care reform debate:
- an economy based on self-employment and small business;
- greater dependence on and need for public health insurance plans;
- a stressed health care delivery system;
- health care provider and workforce shortages;
- an aging rural population;
- a sicker, more at-risk population;
- the need for preventive care, health and wellness resources;
- lack of mental health services;
- increasing dependence on technology;
- effective emergency medical services.
In particular, since 1969, the number of self-employed workers in rural areas has grown by over 240 percent. With an economy dominated by small businesses and self-employment, it is paramount that Congress and the White House get health care reform right for all Americans, urban and rural.
For more information on these and other health care issues facing rural America see www.cfra.org, and for a full, downloadable copy of the center’s Top 10 Rural Health Care Issues report, go to http://files.cfra.org/pdf/Ten-Rural-Issues-for-Health-Care-Reform.pdf.
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