“Thanks to Rep. Jackie Walorski and Washington Republicans’ constant attacks on affordable health care, premiums are increasing across the country, and especially in rural communities,” said DCCC spokesperson Jacob Peters. “Voters will not forget that as long as Jackie Walorski is in Congress, their access to affordable health care coverage is at risk.”
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Rural health care is expensive, and Washington isn’t helping | AXIOS
By Caitlin Owens
April 5, 2018
https://www.axios.com/rural-areas-aca-unaffordable-d45599c2-3823-4041-ad8c-696cf7c15d8f.html
Some of the Affordable Care Act’s biggest problems — rising premiums and lackluster competition among insurers — are most severe in rural areas. And those areas tend to be conservative, but there’s little serious effort among Republicans to address these problems.
Why it matters: Rising premiums put health care further out of reach for middle-class people in these areas. At some point, they’re going to want to hear workable solutions from their elected representatives.
The problem: […] “Conservative approaches to dealing with health costs tend to revolve around a competitive market, but the challenge with rural areas is you don’t have the ingredients for a competitive market,” said Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
What they’re saying: Broadly, Republicans have focused on proposals that would make it easier for healthy people to extricate themselves from the ACA’s insurance markets. Those consumers would likely pay less, but costs and competition would only get worse for the people who need the coverage guarantees the ACA provides.
[…] The other side: There was some bipartisan support earlier this year for a new reinsurance program, which would offset the costs of insurers’ most expensive customers. Experts said it would have helped, including in rural areas. But it fell apart.
- Democrats have proposed a slew of ideas they say could help ease the burden in sparsely populated regions, mostly at taxpayers’ expense — including a public option, an expansion of the ACA’s premium subsidies, or new caps on payments.
[…] The bottom line: Reinsurance is by far the most bipartisan solution to the rural problem. Even that couldn’t get through this Congress, and lawmakers aren’t expected to return to health care policy before the midterms. This problem will likely get worse before it gets better.