Small risk pools may contribute to rural areas’ challenges with private insurance plans, but risk reinsurance, or insurance for the insurer, could be a potential policy solution, according to a new study.

A health insurance risk pool is a group of individuals whose medical costs are combined to calculate premiums.

“A lot of our prior work on market-based insurance has shown that premiums tend to be higher in rural areas, and there is anecdotal evidence, often put forth by insurers, that a lack of health care providers is a factor in making insurance more expensive,” says author Abigail Barker, a research assistant professor, faculty lead for data and methods at the Center for Health Economics and Policy at the Institute for Public Health at the Washington University in St. Louis.

Read the full article about rural healthcare premiums by Neil Schoenherr at Futurity.