Abstract
In recent years, Maine’s health care landscape has undergone a rapid transformation, the result of state and federal policies, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the state’s shifting demographic composition. This study examines the interaction between these changes and measures of access to care among adults in rural Maine from 2018 to 2023. Using individual-level survey data and county-level credit bureau data, we examine measures of health insurance coverage, health care utilization, and medical debt across rural Maine. We document a significant increase in the self-reported rate of health insurance coverage during this period, with the most pronounced coverage gains among adults in economically disadvantaged rural areas. Coverage gains among adults in rural Maine are associated with steep reductions in financial barriers to care and large increases in several measures of primary and preventive care. However, we find evidence of ongoing access challenges, with over one in four adults in rural Maine reporting having delayed medical care for reasons other than costs in 2022, and persistent disparities in access to dental care between adults in metro and rural areas. In addition, while our findings capture a substantial decline in the likelihood of having health care bills that are being paid off over time, we document continuously elevated levels of medical debt among adults in rural Maine counties. The findings from our analysis highlight recent progress in coverage and access to care as well as ongoing challenges and barriers to care across rural Maine communities.
First page
44
Last page
58
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.53558/fnzr2154
Recommended Citation
Becker, Zoe A. , and Jordan H. Rhodes. "Recent Changes in Access to Care among Adults in Rural Maine." Maine Policy Review 34.2 (2025) : 44 -58, https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol34/iss2/1.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
