By Robert Pore

Jim Knopik, a Belgrade farmer, recently testified before Congress urging health care reform.

  

Knopik,  a lifelong resident and livestock farmer from Belgrade, Nebraska, said that over the past 50 years, he has watched the population of Nance County decline.

 

“There were once 49 families within two miles of our farm, there are now only five,” he said. “The remaining family farmers and main street businesses, the economic engines of our community, are struggling.”

He said access to affordable health care is one of the primary causes of their struggle.

Knopik said he and his wife have purchased health insurance coverage in the individual market, but the premiums have become “so unaffordable that we have considered dropping our coverage in order to meet other expenses.”

 ”Many farmers and their spouses work off the farm for health insurance,” he said.  “This often prevents farm families from growing their farming operations and developing profitable new enterprises.” 

“This is simply unsustainable,” he said.

Without sufficient competition in the health insurance marketplace, Knopik said they will continue to struggle because of the high cost of insurance.

“For farmers, this is a familiar challenge,” he said. “For decades we have been squeezed by corporate agribusiness and health insurance monopolies are treating us no better.”

 Knopik said America’s family farmers, ranchers and rural small business owners are counting on Congress to act decisively to set our health care system back on track.

“We need competition in the marketplace and regulations that put people before profits,” he said.

But both Sens. Ben Nelson and Mike Johanns have questions health care reform pending before the Senate.

Last week, the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest, released of a new television ad in Nebraska today asking Nelson and Johanns to vote in favor of allowing health care reform to reach the Senate floor and then allowing a vote on the bill.

“Clearly, we want Senators Nelson and Johanns to vote for a bill that guarantees good, affordable health care for our families and businesses, but before we can even get to that step, we need at least 60 Senators to vote to start debate,” said Rebecca Gould, Executive Director of Nebraska Appleseed. “Regardless of where our Senators stand on various aspects of the legislation, it is vital that what has been called the ‘world’s greatest deliberative body’ actually be allowed to deliberate.”

According to the Appleseed Center, one in eight Nebraskans was uninsured in 2008, and without reform, the number of uninsured in Nebraska in 2019 will reach 293,000.

On Monday, Johanns again appealed for an analysis of the Senate health care reform bill’s impact on long-term health care costs. On Thursday, Johanns 24 of his Senate colleagues sent a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid requesting the analysis by the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS). On Saturday, Johanns said the CMS Actuary released its analysis of the House bill and concluded that cuts to Medicare in the bill would cut benefits for some seniors and restrict access for millions across the country. The CMS study also concluded that the House bill fails to bend the cost curve, a primary goal of any health care reform legislation, Johanns said. ”In light of the CMS Actuary’s report on the House bill, it is now especially clear that the same analysis of Senate legislation is needed,” Johanns said. “The report unequivocally confirms cuts to Medicare benefits, increased health care costs, and significantly restricted access to quality care would result if the House bill is enacted. The American people deserve to know whether the same would be true with any bill voted on in the Senate. It is critical that we obtain this basic information before voting on an overhaul of our system that will impact every American.”