(Photo by Cecilia Lynch/USDA via the North Dakota Monitor)
( . North Dakota Monitor) – Americans living in rural communities throughout the country could see their access to health care diminish if Congress changes eligibility for Medicaid or significantly reduces its federal funding.
While rural residents who depend on the state-federal program for lower income people would experience the most substantial impacts, those who have private health insurance or have other coverage, like Medicare, would likely encounter changes as well.
Rural hospitals and primary care physicians’ incomes would likely go down if Medicaid patients are no longer able to afford the same level of health care, potentially leading to reductions in services offered for everyone or even closures, according to experts.
Whitney Zahnd, assistant professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Iowa, said that cuts to Medicaid “will disproportionately hit rural communities,” where 24% of people are covered by the program, including 47% of all births and a majority of nursing home patients.
