09/18/08 Healthcare Causing Pinch for Agriculture

Healthcare Causing Pinch for Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. A new study says that one in four non-corporate farm and ranch operators are having trouble with healthcare. Carol Pryor, Senior Policy Analyst at The Access Project explains. PRYOR: We did a survey of family farmers and ranchers in 7 Great Plains states trying to learn more about how much they were spending on health insurance and other healthcare costs and the impact of those costs both on their families and on their businesses and what we found was that many of these folks are spending really huge percentages of their income on health insurance premiums and out of pocket costs. The study started out by asking if in fact the families had insurance and while most had insurance of some kind Pryor says the interesting part is what they are paying. PRYOR: Almost half of them were spending more than 10% of their income on healthcare and even more concerning; a quarter of them said that the expenses are causing them real financial problems. Those folks are spending more than 40% of their income on healthcare. These expenses really are affecting people's businesses. It's making it harder for people to invest in their farms. Sometimes it's forcing them to take out loans against their farms. In the tight economy that we already have, that can be disastrous not only for the individual but for the rural economy. PRYOR: Family farmers and ranchers make up the bulk of farms in this country and they represent a very important part of rural economies so every dollar that a farmer is forced to spend on healthcare doesn't go for maybe buying a new tractor or getting a new truck, being able to farm more acres. In some cases farmers and ranchers are forced to go and find off farm and ranch employment just to get the insurance coverage. And that can negatively affect other businesses in rural areas that also depend on the ag producers. PRYOR: There's a lot of discussion right now both at the state levels and nationally about making changes to the healthcare system. Some of these proposals involve people purchasing or getting insurance through the non-group market and we want to make sure that they are very aware of the problems in the market and that any solutions that are proposed are real solutions that really protect people and don't just offer insurance coverage that doesn't provide real protection That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.