Posted: 03.17.2010

The National Farmers Union convention wrapped up Tuesday in Rapid City, South Dakota, after adopting deep resolutions on health care.

Wisconsin Farmers Union’s national delegates joined other members from across the country to push federal policymakers to make effective health care reforms, including the publicly run option. The issue was among NFU special orders of business approved this morning.
 
“The numbers show that family farmers pay a much bigger price for out-of-pocket health expenses and health insurance than most other Americans,” said Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden, who is leading Wisconsin’s delegation at the NFU convention. “It’s nearly impossible for average family farmers to not have someone working away from the farm to receive health coverage.”
 
Von Ruden said insurers also can too easily drop family farmers from health insurance policies. Wisconsin’s delegates supported asking Congress for enhanced regulations to prevent insurers from denying coverage based on health status, age, gender, occupation or location.
 
Delegates also asked Congress to consider:
 
n  Ending antitrust exemptions granted to health insurance companies, to increase market competition.

n  Allowing self-employed people to deduct health care costs as businesses expenses before calculating their self-employment taxes, similar to the way employees pay payroll taxes after non-taxable health care costs are deducted from their paychecks.

n  Adequate financial assistance for low- and middle-income families, considering that rural Americans pay more out-of-pocket health care costs than urban people pay.

n  Incentives to attract health care professionals to rural areas, focusing on increasing the number of primary-care physicians in rural areas.

n  Federal support for rural hospitals.

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