Good-quality, affordable health care shouldn’t depend on your zip code

The challenges of finding good quality, affordable health care is a subject I hear about everywhere I go in my district in Pennsylvania. As a member of the Bipartisan Rural Health Caucus, I am constantly working to find ways to expand and protect access to care for all members of our community — because your health care shouldn’t depend on where you live. It’s a problem that matters for Democrats, and that matters for Republicans. And it’s a problem that we need to work together to solve.

There are approximately 60 million individuals living in rural communities across the United States, including over a third of Pennsylvanians. Across my district, access to health care in the rural parts is a recurring challenge, though I’ve been happy to see the expansion of two of our hospital networks into the more rural areas. These communities are experiencing shortages of health care providers — in fact, 26 percent of rural Pennsylvanians live in a federally-designated Health Professional Shortage Area. Making the situation more dire, 30 percent of physicians currently practicing in rural areas intend to leave the workforce over the next five years. This is an enormous issue for access to preventive care, which is critical to overall health and well-being.

That’s why Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) and I are pushing to pass our bill, the bipartisan Fairness for Rural Teaching Hospitals Act. This bill would update the calculations used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to make sure that rural teaching hospitals are receiving a higher, fairer reimbursement for the work they do in training the next generation of rural physicians — work that is critical in combatting the shortage of health care providers in our communities.

Ensuring that our rural hospitals receive the funds they need is key to attracting, training and retaining talented health care professionals to every community, so that people in need of quality and affordable health care can find it, no matter where they live.

Beyond making sure that rural areas have the providers to serve them, we need to prevent discrimination against hospitals and clinics that participate in the 340B drug pricing program, which many rural communities depend on for lower prescription drug prices. Under no circumstances should pharmacy benefit managers, insurance companies, or pharmaceutical companies be allowed to undermine affordable savings for American families — which is why I’m supporting the bipartisan PROTECT 340B Act that would block them from undermining patients’ choices.

Moreover, at a time when health care is increasingly happening outside of hospitals and doctors’ offices, we must expand access to affordable high-speed internet. Telehealth appointments offer flexibility and convenience that is attractive to many patients — but these appointments require a reliable internet connection, something our rural areas often lack access to. The Affordable Connectivity Program created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is getting to work to tackle this problem through providing broadband subsidies to more than 36,000 households in Pennsylvania’s 7th District, as is the $1.2 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds coming to our commonwealth to fund broadband infrastructure. I’m advocating to make sure that every corner of my district sees these investments in high-speed internet, and I’m keeping up the push to make internet access affordable for all Pennsylvania families so that telehealth services are accessible as well. 

I believe that health care is a human right, and that every single person deserves access to good-quality, affordable health care — no matter their zip code. I will always keep up the fight to ensure that my community, and every community, can see a doctor, afford their medications and feel the peace of mind that quality health care brings. No one deserves any less.

Susan Wild represents Pennsylvania’s 7th District.