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Vilsack says health law improving rural lives

New rules for farm accident victims:   Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters Wednesday that by removing insurance barriers to emergency services, through the Affordable Health Care Act, rural Americans can now get care outside their health plan network when there isn’t time to travel to a hospital located further away. 

“When there is an accident on the farm and someone has been severely injured,” Vilsack says, “They don’t have to try to figure out which health care provider is in their network that they can go to where they need to go to get the quickest and best care available to save their life and to minimize their injury.” 

Vilsack says the USDA has worked to help implement a number of improvements for rural health care in the health care law that is now two years old.  He says nearly 600 rural health care facilities serving 11 million Americans have been improved; telemedicine grants and loans have been provided in 730 counties; and, with the Department of Health and Human Services, incentives have brought thousands of primary care workers into rural areas.

USDA – Secretary Vilsack on Affordable Care Act