{"id":69430,"date":"2017-06-27T21:32:01","date_gmt":"2017-06-28T03:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-health-care-act-would-harm-farmers-and-ranchers\/"},"modified":"2017-06-28T03:32:01","modified_gmt":"2017-06-28T03:32:01","slug":"new-health-care-act-would-harm-farmers-and-ranchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-health-care-act-would-harm-farmers-and-ranchers\/","title":{"rendered":"New health care act would harm farmers and ranchers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Agriculture
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, in the background, during a May 15 trip to Couser Cattle Co. in Nevada, Iowa.<\/span>Preston Keres\/U.S. Department of Agriculture<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Facing stiff Republican opposition, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday delayed a vote on legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act as several Republicans cast doubt on whether there\u2019s enough support to advance the bill.<\/p>\n

McConnell faced resistance from the most moderate and conservative senators. Had he pushed forward this week, it\u2019s doubtful that he would have had enough votes to begin debate on the bill.<\/p>\n

The full draft of the Senate bill, which Republican leaders released on June 22, includes cuts that would affect rural Westerners, although it phases out Medicaid more slowly than the House version.<\/p>\n

Its impact reaches across the Rockies and plains.<\/p>\n

Dale McCall is a fourth-generation farmer with a sprawling field where he grows alfalfa, hay and sunflowers near Yuma, Colorado. The 70-year-old also works part-time in the area\u2019s school district; one of the job\u2019s benefits is decent health care coverage, despite his pre-existing conditions. His son, Tim, farms nearby and feels underinsured by his health plan. He and his family couldn\u2019t qualify for programs like Medicaid, which covers lower-income individuals, so he bought a high-deductible plan on the open market which covers only catastrophes. McCall\u2019s grandson, Robert, is covered by his wife\u2019s employer\u2019s insurance plan.<\/p>\n

But as the Republican American Health Care Act moves forward, the situation for all of the McCalls could change drastically if the controversial legislation were to pass.<\/p>\n

In May, the AHCA narrowly cleared the House. Since then, Republican lawmakers have been debating over the degree to which it might change as it wends its way toward passage. McConnell accelerated the process in June by invoking a rule that allows the AHCA, because it is a budget reconciliation bill, to bypass the usual committee discussions and move forward to a full Senate vote, where it could pass with a simple majority: 51 votes.<\/p>\n

Not much information has been made public about the Trump administration\u2019s replacement bill. But according to recent reports, many Americans who gained insurance under the Obama administration\u2019s Affordable Care Act now stand to lose it \u2013 especially agricultural workers in the rural West.<\/p>\n

The AHCA proposal would have major impacts on many aspects of current health care, but the debate over the bill centers on three issues that disproportionately affect rural communities and agricultural workers.<\/p>\n

First, the AHCA would drastically scale back coverage under federal programs like Medicaid, which was expanded in many states under the ACA.<\/em>Second, the plan would likely cause fewer people to enroll in plans on the individual marketplace, where people who can\u2019t get coverage through an employer, spouse or Medicaid buy insurance. According to a May report from the Joint Economic Committee, that would cause premiums to increase for individuals that remain covered there.<\/em>And third, the AHCA could also make it harder for some people to gain coverage because of pre-existing conditions.<\/em>\u201c(The AHCA) would devastate rural communities, including increasing the number of uninsured, stripping $839 billion from Medicaid, threatening rural hospital closures and destabilizing individual marketplaces,\u201d Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, ranking minority staff member on the Joint Economic Committee, said in a recent statement.<\/p>\n

In the rural West, many farmers, ranchers and other agricultural workers are self-employed, so they can\u2019t get coverage through an employer. Hence, a higher percentage of agricultural employees are covered by Medicaid (11 percent) than in non-agricultural industries (8 percent). Before the ACA was enacted in 2010, workers in the agricultural sector had fewer options, so many remained uninsured. But under the Obama-era plan, many states expanded Medicaid, increasing the percentage of those covered. Under the AHCA, that expansion would be significantly scaled back, according to the Joint Economic Committee report.<\/p>\n

In Western states, Montana residents could be especially hurt if the AHCA were passed because of the state\u2019s Medicaid expansion, which covered 142,000 people \u2013 or 14 percent of the state\u2019s population (only 2 percent were covered by Medicaid before the ACA, also known as Obamacare). Ruby Denison, a small-scale farmer in Hamilton, Montana, worries about the fate of those people under reform. \u201cPrices have gone up, and companies that used to cover the health care expenses of spouses are scaling back those offers,\u201d Denison said. \u201cOur small farmers in Montana really struggle, and Medicaid has created a pathway for people. We would be hugely impacted here if that disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n

But those not covered under Medicaid could also be vulnerable to changes. Dale McCall\u2019s son, Tim, and his family have health care coverage from the open market. \u201cIt\u2019s very limited protection,\u201d McCall said. \u201cWe are concerned. I know that he worries that without adequate coverage a major health issue could impact (him or) his family.\u201d Farming is ranked among the most dangerous professions, and agricultural workers had an injury rate far higher than do mining or manufacturing workers. In 2015, the injury rate for agricultural workers was over 40 percent higher than the average rate for all workers. \u201cThey work with machinery, and even exposure to the environment \u2013 skin cancer and other things like that \u2013 farmers have to consider,\u201d McCall said. \u201cIt\u2019s also rigorous work. Thirty to 40 years of that really begin to take a toll on the human body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Older and sicker populations, who are more concentrated in rural areas, are also more vulnerable to health care reductions. McCall, also the president of the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, worries about imminent changes to coverage of pre-existing conditions under the Republicans\u2019 proposed health care plan. \u201cIt appears that people over 50 years could be charged significantly more,\u201d McCall said. \u201cOf course a lot of farmers and ranchers, me included, fall well above that.\u201d The average age of those in the agricultural sector is 58 \u2013 and increasing, according to the Department of Agriculture; they\u2019re also more likely to have pre-exisiting conditions. The Congressional Budget Office found that under the AHCA, 40 percent of people 50 to 64 years old could be denied coverage in the individual market without the ACA\u2019s protections for those with pre-existing conditions. Since the new plan includes a provision that gives insurers the option not to cover those with pre-existing conditions \u2013 or raise the rates significantly for those who do. Under the AHCA, those with pre-exisiting conditions would likely be forced into \u201chigh-risk pools\u201d \u2013 how states provided coverage before the ACA for people with serious medical issues, but at a much higher rate. That would increase their health care costs and could cause them to drop out.<\/p>\n

What exactly is inside the AHCA, of course, remains nebulous. The version that passed the House is likely to change, as a small group of Republican lawmakers scramble to rework the plan before putting it to a full Senate vote, now delayed until after the July 4 recess. \u201cIt\u2019s still a long ways from being passed,\u201d McCall said. \u201cI hope they take enough time to do it correctly, and that the Senate will consider provisions that would make it more palatable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

expected to scale back Medicaid coverage, hurt self-employed agricultural workers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-69430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69430"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=69430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}