November 24, 2009, 1:07 pm

NY Times:Farm Union Aims Health Pitch at Key States

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

In a news conference on Tuesday aimed at pressuring swing-vote senators, leaders of the National Farmers Union, which represents about 250,000 farm and ranch families, stressed the importance of major health care legislation to agricultural workers in Arkansas, Maine and Nebraska.

Those states, of course, were carefully chosen. Senator Blanche Lincoln, Democrat of Arkansas and chairwoman of the Agriculture Committee, voted on Saturday to move forward with debate on the health care bill. But she has threatened to oppose it if big changes are not made. Mrs. Lincoln has voiced particular concern over a proposed government-run health insurance plan, or public option, that would compete with private insurers.

Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, has issued a similar threat to block final adoption of the legislation. He is uncomfortable with the idea of the public option, but has also suggested that the bill is too expensive, and that it should focus more immediately on controlling the rise of health care costs for everyone rather than on expanding health benefits to the more than 30 million citizens currently uninsured.

And Maine’s two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe, are viewed as the most likely members of their party to potentially support the bill. But both of them voted against starting debate of the bill, and they have said that the legislation would have to be rewritten substantially to win their support. Both Maine senators have expressed opposition to the public option and have raised concerns about some of the new taxes proposed to help pay for the health care bill.

In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, the president of the National Farmers Union, Roger Johnson, was joined by local advocates for farmers in all three states, and they stressed the particular obstacles to affordable health insurance for many farmers and rural Americans.

“In the rural parts of this country our access to health care is reduced,” Mr. Johnson said.

He and others cited statistics showing that while the vast majority of American farmers have health insurance, it tends to be much more expensive for them, to provide less comprehensive coverage and about one-third of farmers and rural Americans buy their own individual and family policies compared to about 8 percent of the nation as a whole.

John Hansen, the president of the Nebraska chapter of the Farmers Union, noted that the state had succeeded in lowering its utility costs through the use of publicly sponsored generation of electricity, including wind power, to make a case for government-run health insurance.

“The public option in Nebraska for electric generation has served us extremely well,” he said, “and yet we villainize a similar kind of public option when it comes to health care.” Mr. Hansen said that 69 percent of health insurance policies in the state were written by just two private insurers and that the public plan — a government-run insurance option — was needed to increase competition.

Olly Neal, the vice president of the Arkansas Land and Development Corporation, a nonprofit group, praised Mrs. Lincoln for supporting the start of debate on the Senate health care bill. “We are very pleased that she agreed to the current health care bill in the senate being moved forward to debate,” he said, adding that many of the residents of rural East Arkansas lacked access to health insurance and sufficient health care services.

And Annie Cheatem, the president of the New England Chapter of the Farmers Union, said her group was working with local food operatives and community-based agricultural supporters to lobby Senators Collins and Snowe to support the legislation.

But not all agricultural groups support the legislation currently under consideration in Congress. The American Farm Bureau, for instance, has expressed opposition to the House-passed health care legislation and raised serious concerns about the bill headed for debate in the Senate. The Farm Bureau, the nation’s largest agriculture lobby, has said that it imposes a mandate in the House bill that would require most employers to provide insurance to their workers, and it also opposes the public option.

Agriculture issues in Congress tend to cut along geographic rather than party lines. Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, and the former chairman of the Agriculture Committee, is a big supporter of the health care legislation. But Senator Mike Johanns, Republican of Nebraska, who was agriculture secretary in the Bush administration, is opposed to the bill and voted against starting debate on Saturday.

Mrs. Lincoln, who became the chairwoman of the Agriculture Committee in the shuffle of committee positions following the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, is home in Arkansas this week. There, she held her first field hearing, called “Revitalizing Rural America” to examine ways to strengthen her state’s rural economy.

Mrs. Lincoln’s role on the committee puts her in a strong position to protect her state’s agricultural interests. And that role is likely to be a major factor in her bid for re-election next year, which is expected to be a tough contest.