Rural Americans would be one of the largest beneficiaries of the health care reform plans being put forth by progressive politicians. Rural Americans are more likely to be uninsured than their urban counterparts, and must pay higher premiums on average than their urban counterparts. Rural Americans are also less likely to be screened for cancers and other potential hazards due to the lack of available primary care physicians in their area. In addition, rural counties are more likely to have only a single insurance issuer than urban counties.
Despite these health care problems rural Americans face, they don't support progressives on health care reform. In 2017, a survey found that 54% of rural Americans favored repealing Obamacare. While most of the rural disdain for the Affordable Care Act comes from rural Republicans, the polling reveals skepticism from all rural Americans. Rural Democrats were twice as likely to support repealing Obamacare than urban Democrats, and rural Independents were 14% more likely than urban Independents to support repealing Obamacare. So rural Americans, regardless of their political identity, are more likely to oppose attempts to increase access to health care despite having more to gain from these reforms.
Why isn't health care an issue that gives Democrats some modicum of rural support? It starts with rural Americans not caring about access to health care.
When rural Americans were asked by Kaiser Permanente what the biggest problem facing their community was, only 2% of the respondents cited the cost or availability of health care. Democrats can't win rural voters over with their health care stance if rural voters don't care about health care. Democrats need to first explain to rural voters how their health care plans will benefit them. Democratic politicians need to describe to rural Americans how their plans can create competition for insurance issuers who have monopolies over isolated rural counties. Democratic politicians should hammer how unfair it is for rural Americans to have to pay higher premiums than urbanites when rural Americans already have higher transportation costs for medical care.
If affordable access to health care is going to remain one of the Democratic Party's primary policy goals, then Democrats should look to wring as many voters as possible out of this stance. Rural voters, despite favoring the repeal of Obamacare, overwhelmingly support Medicaid. Two-thirds of rural Americans believe Medicaid is "very important" to their community, and an additional 27% of rural Americans believe Medicaid is "somewhat important" to their community. I believe rural voters can show similar levels of support for future health care reform bills, but rural Americans need to be convinced that these bills are for them.
6 comments:
Hi Brandon,
I found your blog post to be incredibly interesting and a little infuriating. While reading, I kept thinking, "how can they be opposed to healthcare when it could help them?!" However, it got me thinking that perhaps when rural voters see politicians arguing about healthcare, they do not feel represented or seen. If politicians made more of an effort to focus in on what exactly rural voters need and want a healthcare system to look like, do you think that would start garnering more rural support for a healthcare plan? The reason I say this is because although healthcare is a necessity, health services in the city may be different than what a rural area needs. Perhaps a rural area doesn't need more than one hospital, but they might need access to other services like women's reproductive clinics, and the like. As you mention in your post, rural individuals are less likely to be screened for cancers, more likely to be uninsured, and more likely to pay higher premiums. Considering all this, I am having a hard time understanding why rural areas do not support health care reform when they could stand to benefit from it.
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Hi Brandon,
Your post is something I have wondered about in the past and it brought a few things to mind for me. I'm curious about what level of influence misinformation and misrepresentation of what is Obamacare versus the ACA versus Medicare/Medicaid plays into people's opinions on them. The name a politician uses for healthcare programs can seem to inform what people think of it, even if they are really all the same thing. I'm also curious if a lack of access to healthcare providers in rural places plays into people not supporting healthcare reform or finding that it would add any value to their lives. For example, if someone gains affordable insurance but still has to travel several hours to see their doctor, their access has increased in one aspect but not in another, potentially more significant one.
This is a wonderful post, Brandon! I find it incredibly interesting how despite being one of the largest beneficiaries of the health care reform plans being put forth by progressive politicians, rural Americans don't support their plans. I think what you mentioned is very important to note, that in order for communities to support initiatives, they first have to understand how those initiatives will impact them personally. I believe that politicians, who are constantly being briefed on how their policies will affect others, don’t think twice about then taking that information and relaying it to individuals in layman's terms. Therefore, I agree with you that Democrats need to first explain to rural voters how their health care plans will benefit them before they can gather support for their cause. Another thing that I will mention is that most often, individuals with strong party preferences refuse to listen to the other party because of deeper values. In this case, it’s often hard, even with an in-depth explanation to convince one side that what the other side is doing in government is beneficial for them, sometimes even more so that what their own party is proposing.
The messaging problems surrounding health care mystify me. Amelia, I echo your concerns about naming conventions, like Obamacare, and I think states have worried about that as they did their own messaging. Schwarzenegger implemented Obamacare in CA with the moniker Covered California, and I wonder if there is data about how state health care marketplace names have worked in the past 10 yrs. Also, maybe I'm naive, but I do think that some politicians are sincerely trying to explain things in lay terms. I do worry about sources of information though.
I was very interested in this post, as I too have always questioned why rural voters do not care about health care as much as others. I agree that if the new Administration wants to see a change in how rural Americans view health care, they will need to develop a strategy to show and describe how these health care plans can really help them. The statistic that only 2% of rural Americans see health care as the biggest problem in their community was shocking – I didn’t expect health care to be at the top of the list, but for it to be at the bottom is quite concerning. I am looking forward to seeing what the new Administration does with health care. Thank you for the post!”
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