Health costs hit farmers - Woodland, California

In light of a new report on the increasing burden of health care costs on California's family farmers and ranchers, Yolo County policymakers are discussing ways to better protect area residents and the agriculture-dominated local economy.

At a meeting in Woodland on July 31, a group of 14 individuals that included three county supervisors, as well as the county's health department director and its agricultural commissioner, gathered to learn more about the report and start brainstorming ways to ease the financial burden on the ag community.

The report was issued in May by the Access Project, a Boston-based group that works with cities and counties around the country to promote health access. The findings were based on a survey last year of nearly 1,800 family farmers and ranchers throughout California, where 98 percent of farms are family-owned and operated.

The authors found that roughly one-third of the respondents have no access to group health coverage and do not qualify for government sponsored programs, and must therefore purchase insurance through the individual market. Among those whose principal occupation was farming or ranching, that figure jumped to 48 percent.

Those numbers are significantly higher than the national average; a mere eight percent of insured Americans purchase individual insurance.

Buying direct comes at a significant cost: The survey found that families with non-group health coverage spent nearly $4,700 more per year on premiums and out-of-pocket expenses than those who got their insurance through employment outside the family farm or ranch.

"These costs end up eating up a family's savings, increasing their credit card debt or taking away from their retirement funds," said Bill Lottero, the Access Project's field director and a co-author of the report, which was funded by the California Endowment, a private health foundation. "When I speak to young people from farming families, they name this as a barrier to getting into farming."

California's family farms produce $32 billion per year in value and support 1.1 million jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Lottero, who led the Woodland discussion, noted that farm and ranch operators have higher incomes and are insured at much higher rates than the general population; 90 percent of the respondents to Lottero's survey said all members of their household had been continuously insured during the previous year.

Yet 13 percent of respondents said they were saddled with medical debt and some families reported that as much as 44 percent of their income went toward health care-related expenditures. In addition, 16 percent of respondents said they or a family member had delayed seeking medical care, mainly because they could not afford the anticipated cost.

Woodland farmer Robert Ramming, whose family owns and operates Pacific Star Gardens, an organic "U-pick" farm and fruit stand, is all too familiar with the financial burden of health care, which costs him roughly $8,000 per year, he said. His family of six purchased health insurance through the individual market, and insurance premiums alone eat up about $6,000 annually, he said.

"Our family is in good health and we have a high-deductible policy, and even so, we're spending a huge amount of money on premiums," he said. "If we had anything like a preexisting (medical) condition or a string of bad luck, we'd be up a creek."

Ramming, who is 52, said he hopes that when he and his wife turn 65, Medicare will still be there to take care of them. Then, he said, they can finally start putting some money into a retirement fund - a fund that is currently nonexistent, thanks to the family's health care bills and other pressing business and personal expenses.

The pain of individual farming families like Ramming's trickles outward through the economy, said John Karatzas, the California project director for the Small Business Majority, a national nonprofit organization of business entrepreneurs.

"Research tells us that most small businesses are getting killed by health care costs," he said. "It's going to stifle economic development. We really can't survive this way."

Yolo County Supervisor Helen Thomson expressed concern that prohibitive health care costs would harm not only patients but also local health care providers and clinics.

"The situation is becoming very scary," she said at the Woodland discussion, held at the county health department headquarters on N. Cottonwood Street.

Lottero said he viewed the informal gathering as a jumping-off point, a way to raise concern among local policymakers and spur them to take action on behalf of Yolo County's large - and profitable - agricultural community. Local farmers and ranchers produced more than $370 million worth of goods in 2006, according to the Yolo County Farm Bureau.

Lottero also encouraged the attendees to reach out to other influential individuals and groups, including the farm bureau and state-level lawmakers, some of whom have important health care reform bills pending in the Legislature.

Ultimately, Lottero said, he hopes to see California's agricultural businesses community connect with the broader small business community and come together for a statewide health care summit about a year from now. He plans to continue meeting with county leaders around the state to help make that happen.

Ramming, who attended the Woodland discussion and took extensive notes, said he hoped to see fewer policy meetings and more concrete action in the coming months and years.

"The local 'powers that be' seem to be on same page understanding the problem," he said in a phone interview Monday. "They seem to be realizing that the problem (of health care costs) isn't just affecting underemployed people, lower-income folks. It has expanded to the middle class and the upper-middle class, and something has to be done."