{"id":13111,"date":"2013-11-22T15:44:12","date_gmt":"2013-11-22T20:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=13111"},"modified":"2013-11-22T15:44:12","modified_gmt":"2013-11-22T20:44:12","slug":"why-so-many-uninsured-people-in-rural-areas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2013\/11\/22\/why-so-many-uninsured-people-in-rural-areas\/","title":{"rendered":"Why so many uninsured people in rural areas?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Lori<\/a>, Creative Commons, some rights reserved<\/p><\/div>\n

On Tuesday, the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families reported that, overall, the rate of uninsured children in the U.S. has been decreasing since 2008<\/a>. In other words, more children are getting health insurance. Good news, right? The authors of the study suggested that we can thank Medicaid and the Children\u2019s Health Insurance Program for this progress.<\/p>\n

Almost as an afterthought, the report points out that rural areas missed out on the progress.<\/p>\n

The uninsured rate for children living in urban areas had a statistically significant decline from 8.0 percent to 7.0 percent, making it lower than the national average. Children living in rural areas have a higher uninsured rate (7.8) percent than the national average and saw no improvement in their uninsured rate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is it that makes rural residents less likely to have health insurance<\/a>? One of the reasons is that rural employers often run smaller operations, or the jobs that are available are seasonal \u2013 the kind that don\u2019t offer benefits. Also, a common trend is that there\u2019s very little competition among health insurance carriers.\u00a0Often there\u2019s only one or two, and the rates are high<\/a>. So people can\u2019t afford to buy plans for their kids.<\/p>\n

That last point is one of the major hurdles for the Affordable Care Act. President Obama\u2019s new health care law has so far been successful in intensifying the competition among insurance companies in the big cities, but as The New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> last month, this hasn’t gone so well in small towns.<\/p>\n

And that is still the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families reported that, overall, the rate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13111"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13116,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13111\/revisions\/13116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}