Selling the farm

PIERRE — Dale Brehe’s private insurance plight as a farmer is not unusual.

In fact, his $375.75 premium and $2,500 deductible and his wife’s $352.89 premium and $5,000 deductible are what many farm and ranch families pay, according to a recent study by Access Project, a research group that looks at health care costs.

“They keep saying, ‘It’s rising health care costs and hospital costs,’” Brehe said of his health insurance carrier. “The deductibles are ridiculous. You just carry the insurance for the catastrophic stuff so you don’t loose the farm.”

Born to a farming and ranching family with land near Agar, Brehe, now strictly livestock, said his father carried private insurance. But things were different then.

“He got to be 65 when I was 25,” Brehe said. “So, he had supplement insurance, and he had long-term health insurance. But it’s pretty unreal what they want for that.”

Recalling the family’s insurance policies from 1976 when he married his wife, Jane, to the time their daughter graduated high school to the present, Brehe said the family has gone through separate policies and dealt with insurance companies that have come and gone from the state.

“We had health insurance as a family,” Brehe said. “It was costing between four and $500 a month, and it only had a $500 deductible. It didn’t go out of reason for a while. The legislature passed a law sometime in the late ’80s that made most insurance companies pull out of the state.

The one we had when they pulled out sold their subscribers to this other company so they just transferred us over.

“The other insurance companies wouldn’t even talk to us. It was only three years until that insurance company pulled out of the state. They gave us six months notice and they said, ‘You’re on your own.’ I went two years without insurance.”

Though Brehe said private health insurance is part of farming, Nancy Cohen, who helped survey the 2,000 farmers in seven Great Plains states for Access Project’s report, said she is constantly surprised by farmers’ and ranchers’ private health-care burdens.

“I talked to rancher in Harrold who has a $1,400 premium and $5,000 deductible,” Cohen said. “I ask myself, ‘How long can you do that?’”

After shoulder surgery and a broken pelvis claimed on off-the-farm employment insurance, Brehe was unable to get WellMark Insurance, which is sold through the farm bureau. 

Taking a construction job at Sutton Bay Golf Course and a two-year stint at Wal-Mart alleviated the pressure of paying high premiums and deductibles, though the family kept their private insurance, Brehe said.

“When I was working off the farm, the farm still was taken care of,” Brehe said. “It was just taking more hours. I would get off work at 5, and then farm. During haying season, I’d work until I couldn’t see anymore.”

After his wife had knee-replacement surgery for both knees this past year, the insurance pressures came into sharper focus, Brehe said.

“If we didn’t have insurance and she had to have her knees done, we’d lose the farm,” Brehe said. “If you can keep paying the premium, at least, you save your livelihood.”

Michael Held, CEO of South Dakota Farm Bureau, said health insurance for farmers and ranchers has been a concern for the bureau for many years.

“We hear reports of members paying $10,000 to $12,000 a year for health insurance policy,” Held said. “It’s been increasing on a steady rise for a long time. There have been years where premiums have risen 12 to 15 percent.”

Pooling its 4,000 policy holders, including Medicare supplement holders, to negotiate with WellMark for relatively set premium prices, South Dakota Farm Bureau would like to go beyond state lines to build a larger base to avoid the dramatic premium price jumps, Held said.

“We think one option would be to let associations pull their members across state lines,” Held said. “It is not do-able right now. But, you would get a bigger group of individuals in a pool. In a low-population state like South Dakota, that’s a challenge, and if you could put some states together and pool your resources, you have better buying power.”

Not advocating a national health care plan, Bill Lottero, co-author of the Access Project’s report, said researchers believe there are things that can be done to control premium increases.

“The gorilla in the room is private insurance companies,” Lottero said.  “They need to be transparent about costs. And it’s not just Farm Bureau who can take them to task, policymakers have to start asking these questions

“We think private and public partnership, in which the government and the private industry come together to craft effective partnership, can contain costs and offer quality products at a reasonable prices. The country was built on small businesses, and we need to provide some support for them.”