Health and family well-being are important aspects of rural communities. We work on federal and state policy for the betterment of residents in these small towns.
Rural health policy
We work with you to promote policy that makes health insurance affordable for small businesses and family farmers and ranchers and to ensure policy supports small town doctors, clinics, and hospitals.
Rural people have less access to health networks and health care providers, greater rates of disability and chronic diseases, and higher use of all public health care programs. Because of high rates of self-employment and small business employment, rural Americans have lower rates of employer-provided benefits. We're more likely to be underinsured or uninsured for longer periods of time. The 50 million people in rural America are most in need of health care system reform. And we have much to contribute to any reform debate.
Health care is also a major barrier to rural economic development that creates genuine opportunities 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 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.
