The Salt Lake Tribune

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For thousands of rural Utahns without health insurance, health care is out of reach or is put off until it becomes a dire threat. Thirty-one percent of adults in rural counties do not have access to insurance, whether it’s because of high unemployment, or they are self-employed, or they do seasonal work and don’t get insurance, according to a recent study by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. The gap between coverage among rural Utahns and urban Utahns is the second highest in the country, Joan Alker, a research professor at Georgetown and co-author of the study, told me Tuesday. That has repercussions for those in rural areas who do have insurance, she said. If one looks at a map of which hospitals have shut down across the country, they are almost exclusively in rural parts of states that did not expand Medicaid, because those are the ones providing the most uncompensated care.

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