United States Congresswoman Cindy Axne (D) visited eight rural health care clinics in southwest Iowa Friday.

Axne’s visits included the Guthrie Family Medicine Center and the Redfield Medical Clinic. She met with physicians, support staff, and patients to learn about the unique challenges of providing access to quality, affordable health care in rural Iowa.

Axne said she wants to pass legislation that would authorize direct payments to physician assistants through Medicare, to help rural clinics like the one in Redfield, “That is owned by a physician assistant and not by a hospital so they only receive a percentage of reimbursement, 80% as opposed to the 100% reimbursement that a hospital-owned rural health clinic would receive, that’s wrong. And so he, Ed Friedmann who owns the clinic, they’re consistently absorbing costs because they’re not fully reimbursed like a clinic that would be owned by a hospital would be, so we need to fix that.”

Axne also noted the significance of keeping the costs of prescription medication down, but not at a hindrance to rural hospitals. She said cuts to the drug-reimbursement 340B program proposed by the Trump administration would negatively impact hospitals that care for low-income patients. Axne noted that 340B is not paid for by taxpayers but rather profits of the pharmaceutical industry, and she wants those profits to continue to be put into rural healthcare.