Rural Healthcare Initiative

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Access to Health Care in Rural Missouri

Missourians face unique healthcare challenges—we have older populations, lower incomes, and less access to healthcare services—and routinely travel more than an hour to reach doctors for routine care and emergency services. Additionally, rural and farm families have less access to employer-sponsored health insurance and often face higher insurance costs. When farm and rural families do have access to health insurance, they pay more.

Rural Healthcare Issues

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Medicaid Expansion and Implementation

From the beginning, MRCC has been a grassroots leader in the fight to expand Medicaid in Missouri. After a decade of education and advocacy efforts, Missourians voted to expand Medicaid in the midst of a pandemic to provide access to health insurance to hundreds of thousands of our friends, families, and neighbors all across the state. It will also be a lifeline for the rural hospitals that have been struggling to stay open, serving un- and underinsured populations.

It was estimated prior to Covid-19 that over 230,000 additional rural Missourians would qualify for Medicaid when implementation goes into effect on July 1, 2021.

We worked hard for this win, and now our job is to help ensure that the needs of rural Missourians are met through implementation.

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Corporate, Monopolistic Control of Our Healthcare

The same companies controlling the seeds in farm fields are finding their way into our medicine cabinets as corporate mergers combine corporations like Bayer and Monsanto. We know what happens when corporate agriculture’s profits are prioritized over family farms and rural Missourians, our communities, health, and environment, and we see similar results with corporate-controlled healthcare, where health insurance companies and Big Pharma have more influence over access to treatment than doctors or patients. We have to call out and stop the predatory practices that put so many families into medical debt.

MRCC members fight for democratic control of our food and healthcare systems and organize for policy changes that will improve access to care for all Missourians, both urban and rural.

We are committed to protecting the health and well-being of farm and rural families & rural economies. We know that local communities know best what their healthcare needs are—and we want to hear from YOU about what healthcare policies you support.

Please get in touch with Dina at dina@morural.org or (573) 449-1336 if you want to share your healthcare story, join any of our healthcare projects, or have an event in your community!

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Ask Me Anything Medicaid Expansion

Missouri Rural Crisis Center’s Dina Van Der Zalm Asks the questions of professionals in many fields. While this program started to help inform people about Medicaid Expansion it has continued to grow helping Missourians get answers to tough questions. Catch up on the issues including Medicaid Expansion and Implementation, Rural Health Care Access, Voting Rights and much more. Find the videos on our YouTube Channel or on our Ask Anything Video Library Page.