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Rural hospitals are not failing their communities. They are being systematically shortchanged by the corporate insurers draining the lifeblood out of rural healthcare.

Insurers and their propaganda groups blame hospitals for rising costs. But insurers have created the very problems they point to.

Prior authorization horror stories keep piling up, and they all follow the same script. Necessary care is delayed or denied, patients suffer, and insurers profit.

Health insurance companies have created an ever-growing set of delay and denial tactics, strategically deployed to maximize profit.

CMS’ new WISeR model would pull Medicare closer to the denial-driven practices of Medicare Advantage: Expanding prior authorization, rewarding “savings” from withheld care, and increasing pressure on already strained providers.

Medicare Advantage was meant to expand access and improve equity. Instead, it’s deepening disparities, driving physician shortages, and pushing safety-net hospitals closer to collapse.

Yes, there is serious waste, fraud, and abuse in healthcare. But vulnerable patients are not the perpetrators.

Mark, our CEO and lead policy advocate, recently appeared on Meredith Hirsh’s excellent podcast, Working Health. In this engaging discussion, he outlines the many contributors to rural hospital closures, and what can be done to turn the tide.

Doctors are caught between two serious threats: Frivolous malpractice lawsuits that push them toward defensive medicine, and insurance companies that deny or delay care patients need by labeling treatments “not medically necessary.”

Medicare Advantage plans are a masterclass in pulling the wool over the public’s eyes through deceptive advertising, hijacking the trusted “Medicare” name, and benefiting from billions of lobbying and campaign dollars.

Patients and medical providers are being bled dry by insurance companies using loopholes in programs like Medicare Advantage, all to pad their profits while delaying and denying vital care.

Over the decades, insurance payers and their lobbyists have intentionally created an unfair and predatory status quo that ensures big bucks for executives, shareholders, and the politicians in their pocket – while leaving everyone else holding the bag.