HHS analysis: ACA benefits rural communities

The Affordable Care Act has helped Americans living in rural areas get better access to more affordable care, HHS said. The findings come through an analysis of independent studies and government data by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.

The department says the majority of this benefit comes from the health insurance marketplaces. Nearly 2 million rural Americans bought 2016 health coverage through the marketplace, an 11 percent increase from 2015, a bigger increase than the overall enrollment increase for general population between 2015 and 2016. The analysis also said rural customers accounted for one in five of the total healthcare plans purchased on the exchange.

Those plans have helped rural communities increase their coverage by eight percentage points between 2013 and 2015 and decrease the percent of people who cannot afford necessary care by six points between 2012 and 2015.

Plus, 88 percent of the people living in rural areas who purchased plans through the marketplace were eligible for premium tax credits in 2016, while only 84 percent of urban-dwelling marketplace customers were.

Those customers saw their marketplace premiums increase by only about $5 per month between this year and last—the same as for marketplace plans purchased by people living in urban areas.

HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell cited her own experience growing up in West Virginia to explain she knows how much good these healthcare expansions could do in rural parts of the country.

HHS officials touted that all these benefits come despite the fact rural Americans are more likely to live in states that have rejected Medicaid expansions. If those 19 states chose to expand Medicaid, the report argued, rural healthcare access could be improved even further.