Warren rolls out plans for rural health care and farm economy ahead of Iowa swing
COUNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA — Sen. Elizabeth Warren is outlining how she'd invest in rural America and focus on U.S. farmers Wednesday as she embarks on a multi-day swing through Iowa.
The roll-out is of two plans in one, building on some of Warren's previously released plans on immigration, economic patriotism, and closing the race gap in entrepreneurship.
The rural investments include expanding health care access as well as broadband internet access to areas that are currently underserved. And her farm economy plan echoes Warren’s previous concerns with corporate consolidation and a call for “a complete overhaul of our failed approach to the farm economy.”
Here's a further breakdown of her proposal:
Investing in rural America
- Protect rural hospitals. Warren’s plan blocks all future hospital mergers unless the companies can show they’ll maintain or improve access to care. It also creates a new designation to reimburse rural hospitals at a higher rate, increases Community Health Center funding and establishes a $25B capital fund to improving health care access.
- Bring more medical professionals into rural areas. Warren wants to woo medical talent to rural areas through apprenticeships, lifting caps on residents and repaying loans for those who work five years in rural and Native American communities.
- Expand access to broadband in rural areas. Warren’s plan creates an Office of Broadband Access within the Dept. of Economic Development that will manage an $85 billion grant program for rural-broadband infrastructure. The government will pay 90 cents on the dollar for construction done under these grants, and applicants will have to offer public broadband to every home in their area, with at least one plan for low-income customers.
- Restore net neutrality
Building a new farm economy
Replace traditional farm subsidies with loans. Warren's proposal would end most farming subsidies and replace them with a supply management loan program, while still maintaining some subsidies as an insurance plan for weather-related catastrophes and disease. The plan also calls for the government to purchase the goods that the farmers aren’t able to sell. Warren argues that nixing the current subsidy system would end up saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
- Conservation programs. The USDA would offer farmers the option of enrolling in conservation programs that provide landowners with an alternative revenue stream.
- Provide more money for farmer grant programs to fight climate change.
- Break up large agricultural conglomerates through reversing anti-competitive mergers.
- Expand federal purchasing of local produce.
- Combat “systematic dispossession of land in communities of color” by expanding government programs to help farmers of color and Native Americans buy more land.
CORRECTION (Aug. 8, 2019, 6:20 p.m.): A previous version of this article contained two errors about Warren's farm policy. Her plan would end traditional farm subsidies and replace them with loans, while maintaining some subsidies as insurance for natural catastrophes like weather; Warren would not end farm subsidies. The article also incorrectly stated that under the plan, the USDA would purchase farm land to be repurposed for conservation programs. Warren's plan would allow the USDA to offer farmers the option of enrolling in conservation programs that provide them a revenue stream, but the USDA would not purchase land outright.