Research: Rural residents pay higher health insurance rates

Rural residents pay more for health insurance and have fewer choices for insurance providers, according to a newly released study in the Russell Sage Foundation journal, Liz Carey reports for The Daily Yonder. The higher premiums are related to both the lack of competition among insurers and the tendency of rural residents to be older and in poorer health.

University of Minnesota public health professor Jean Abraham studied choice and pricing for individual insurance plans across the United States between 2015 and 2019 to assess market vulnerability and volatility. Market vulnerability measures how many insurers are in an area and what they charge for premiums, whereas volatility is how much a marketplace changes over a given time period, Carey reports.

"Abraham’s found that markets with higher volatility and vulnerability have smaller populations and are more rural, have a higher percentage of non-white people, lower average wages, a higher percent of the population reporting fair or poor health status, and are more likely to be in states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid," Carey reports. "What she found, she said, was that rural areas were more likely to only have one insurer and higher premiums. The cause, according to Abraham, most likely relates to the lack of competition, both in the insurance market and in the healthcare market."