Center for Rural Affairs releases report on public option

Yesterday, Wallace's Farmer reported in Report Explores Why Rural America Needs Public Health Insurance,

"Rural Americans are less insured, more under-insured; when rural Americans go without health insurance they are uninsured for longer periods of time," [Director of Research and Analysis at the Center for Rural Affairs Jon] Bailey, said. "Rural America, of course the economy is dominated by self-employment and small businesses who are having a very difficult time affording health insurance either for themselves or their employees. When you start adding all of those issues together and the effect that they have on people, we just ended up at the place where we figured that a public health insurance option is really needed for rural Americans."

Bailey says they aren't necessarily saying that everyone should be enrolled in a public option but it gives another choice to rural Americans to look at to see if it is affordable for themselves, their families, their employees and whether is provides adequate coverage. Also they found there is a real lack of choice on health insurance in rural areas.

The Center for Rural Affairs' white paper, "Why Rural America Needs a Public Health Insurance Plan Option," is available here in pdf format.

Key points from the short report:

• The cost of health insurance is crushing the self-employed and microbusinesses that form the bulk of the rural economy.

• The availability of affordable and quality health insurance is the primary barrier to entrepreneurship—the most effective rural development strategy—reaching its potential for rural people and rural communities.

• Individual and business mandates with the current system as the only health insurance option are unlikely to address unique rural challenges.

• Workplace characteristics more common in rural areas are risk factors for higher rates of uninsurance, underinsurance and greater dependence on the individual insurance market, conditions all subject to issues of cost, choice and level of coverage that a public health insurance plan could address.

• Public health insurance plan available as an option helps address the rural risk factors leading to rural insurance instability and would act as a backup for all of the rural factors leading to greater insurance instability.

• A public health insurance plan could lead to significantly lower costs for businesses and households. Models show public health insurance plan premiums would be 16 to 30 percent lower than private plans, and premium savings would be up to 41 percent greater with a public health insurance plan.