Health care in rural Texas

The purpose of this article is to assess the quality of health and health c are services available to rural Texans. Specifically, we seek to answer two related questions. First, do people living in rural areas of Texas general ly suffer from poorer health than people living in urban Texas? One undoubt edly would think so, given frequent references to the low quality of person al services in general for rural America. Moreover, the persistence of the congressional Rural Health Care Caucus over the past two decades points to a rural health care crisis. Second, to what extent are these differences in health conditions explained by differences in access to health care enjoye d by people living in the two different regions? Access certainly appears t o be the problem alluded to above. Rural people apparently lack physician c are. In addition to providing answers to these questions, we also examine t he difference in the health conditions and access to care enjoyed by minori ty and non-minority rural Texans. Is this a part of the rural health care p roblem given the high incidence of non-whites in rural Texas? If so this ma y be minority rather than rural neglect. We briefly conclude the article wi th some recommendations for improving the problems we identify.