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7 years ago · by · 318 comments

Healthcare Reform Update: Rural Residents Under Attack in Health Insurance Proposals.

                  

The health of people who live in rural areas is being harshly neglected in current national health policy and in healthcare legislation under discussion in Congress, according to Jeff Smedsrud, CEO of Communicating for America (CA), a non-profit rural advocacy group.

“Our government is making a habit of adopting health care legislation that forgets about the health of rural residents,” Smedsrud said.
Smedsrud, a health insurance expert and entrepreneur, said that rural Americans face numerous health disparities compared to their urban counterparts.

“According to the Centers for Disease Control, the 15 percent of the U.S. population classified as rural are more likely to die from heart disease, cancer, unintentional injury, chronic lower respiratory disease and stroke than their urban counterparts,” Smedsrud said.

He called on Congress to adjust proposed legislation to reflect the fact that rural residents tend to be older and sicker than urban residents, and that insurance choices are dwindling, and often cost more. For example, he said, in 2018 no insurers plan to provide coverage in several mostly-rural counties in Missouri, Ohio, Nevada and Washington. The entire state of Nebraska has only a single insurer under the rules of the ‘Affordable’ Care Act.

“This sparsity of coverage is a condition that needs healing right now,” Smedsrud said.
He emphasized that fewer doctors, per capita, serve rural people and quality care is often out of range physically and financially.

Smedsrud outlined a list of ten recommendations for lawmakers and federal regulators to consider as solutions to remedy the health care gap in rural America:

1.    Maintain reasonable Medicaid coverage that covers the disproportionate share of poor and elderly that reside in rural areas.

2.    Approve virtual, “tele-medicine” services for rural people under federal insurance guidelines. Make it possible for people to see a doctor or mental health provider remotely – on-screen and/or on-line – without driving long distances.

3.    Rescue rural hospitals by maintaining federal reimbursement regulations that help them stay financially viable and remain open.

4.    Recognize that the horrid national opioid epidemic is most prominent on a per capita basis in rural America, requiring funding for prevention and treatment alternatives.

5.    Ensure health insurance options and competition for rural people, so they are not trapped in a one-size-fits-all federally approved insurance plan.

6.    Allow for associations comprised of self-employed small businesses to pool their insurance buying power across state lines and negotiate rates.

7.    Enact Guaranteed Access Pools, or Unified High-Risk Pools as a safety net so all consumers with pre-existing conditions are given access to health insurance.

8.    Strengthen the rural technology infrastructure, enabling tele-medicine technologies that will narrow the rural-urban healthcare divide. Specifically, undertake an urgent program to provide high-speed internet technology to rural areas.

9.    Maintain a senior-level Rural Health Advocate in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with responsibility for assuring that all government healthcare decisions reflect the unique needs of rural residents.

10.  Encourage doctors to serve in rural areas with loan forgiveness programs and expedited H-1B visa processing.

Smedsrud said, “Rural America grows our food, provides important jobs and houses millions of our fellow citizens. Our country’s leaders should have the vision and courage to provide equity of health care for this population.”

Smedsrud said CA’s Platform for Rural Economic Justice provides additional information about rural health and economic issues.

 

Fergus Falls, Minn., July 10, 2017 –  Communicating for America (CA) advocates for the advancement of all Americans and the promotion of their general health, well-being and education . CA provides clear advice and clear answers concerning health care issues, taxes, and immigration.

 

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7 years ago · by · 1,229 comments

Obamacare Insurer Participation Declines 24% in 2017.

 

     

The number of health insurers participating in the ‘Affordable’ Care Act exchanges has declined by 24 percent from 2016 to 2017, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In 2016, there were 287 insurers who offered insurance on the Obamacare exchanges and in 2017 that number dropped to 218. There were 34 states that saw the number of insurers decline, 15 states have the same amount of insurers from 2016 to 2017 and only one state added an insurer in 2017.

Five states, ALABAMA, ALASKA, OKLAHOMA, SOUTH CAROLINA, and WYOMING, have only one insurer operating on the exchanges, leaving consumers with little choice.    

In one-third of counties in the United States, about one in five enrollees, or 21 percent, have access to only one insurer operating on the exchanges. This is a significant increase from the 2 percent of enrollees in 7 percent of counties that had access to only one insurer last year.

“In 2017, insurance company losses led to a number of high profile exits from the market,” the study explains. “In 2017, 58% of enrollees (living in about 30% of counties) had a choice of three or more insurers, compared to 85% of enrollees (living in about 63% of counties) in 2016.”

As larger commercial insurers such as Aetna and United Healthcare have dropped out of Obamacare, many areas will only have regional insurers to choose from, said Ed Haislmaier, an expert in health care policy at the Heritage Foundation.

                           

“The reality is that the individual market even pre-Obamacare was a very small part of their business,” said Haislmaier. “So those companies have basically dropped out and what that leaves are a couple of companies with broader footprints but not more than about 10 or 12 states.”

“What you’re down to is basically in most cases your dominant Blue Cross plan and then depending on the size and location you may have regional players and by regional it could mean either across two or more states or just within a state,” he said.       

Haislmaier and the Heritage Foundation, who originally created the methodology for this type of study earlier this year, said that the ‘Affordable’ Care Act has left consumers with less competition and choice than ever before.

“One of the stated aims of the ‘Affordable’ Care Act was to increase competition among health insurance companies,” said Haislmaier.

“That goal has not been realized, and by several different measures the ACA’s exchanges offer less competition and choice in 2017 than ever before. Now in the fourth year of operation, the exchanges continue to be far less competitive than the individual health insurance market was before the ACA’s implementation.”

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said that Congress needs to repeal and reform Obamacare without delay. 

“The Obamacare death spiral is continuing,” she said. “As rates rise, healthy people drop out and the share of sick people rise, causing further increases in rates. Since these rates are capped then the insurance business becomes less profitable and companies leave the business.”   

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Article printed from Washington Free Beacon: http://freebeacon.com

URL to article: http://freebeacon.com/issues/obamacare-insurer-participation-declines-24-percent-2017/

 

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At Health Insurance 4 Everyone, we not only want to improve our customer service but also interact with our customers on a social media level that was not available before. Interested in connecting with us? Look us up on….   

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