MARQUETTE, TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WZMQ) – The committee to protect health care held a saving rural health care town hall meeting this evening in Marquette Township.
Across Michigan, rural communities are struggling with growing barriers to affordable health care because of this crisis, the Committee to Protect Health Care brought in health care professional and candidate for the Michigan State House, Anna Rink and State Representative Ranjeev Puri, leader of the house Democrats for a conversation on what’s at stake, how to strengthen and protect rural health care and a chance to ask questions. The overwhelming concern was access and the cost of health care.
“They have concerns about affordability, concerns about access, concerns about specialty care,” said Rink.
The duo took questions ranging from reproductive rights to access to mental health facilities. The word that kept coming up was uncertainty.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty. Patients are really scared, and those are concerns that need to be addressed,” explained Rink.
Here in the U.P., we’ve seen hospitals close completely or scale back services, actions that can cripple a community
“If people cannot access the care they need, if hospitals die, our small communities die, that’s the fact of the matter. People are not going to be able to stay in an area where they cannot get the care they need,” said Rink.
Reimbursement to health care providers. Was identified as a key issue across the country, but felt more in rural America.
“Medicaid reimbursement is down and will continue to go down with the laws enacted by Republicans in Congress, and so we only expect those hardships to grow greater,” said Rink.
Representative Puri believes the way out of this crisis is to hold our elected officials responsible and to make health care, be it rural or otherwise, a priority.
“And so you’re starting to see now a number of health care clinics all over the country close, but that’s going to disproportionately affect places like the Upper Peninsula in Michigan,” said Puri
