News from rural America.

A loophole in reimbursement rates is partly to blame for rural hospitals closing, Maine may become the first state to ban large-scale data centers and farmers' financial woes are made worse by laws that prevent them from fixing their farm equipment.

TRANSCRIPT

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, this is the news from rural America.

Rural hospitals are closing, and a regulatory loophole is partly to blame.

Since 2016, hundreds of hospitals located near urban centers secured administratively rural status for Medicare purposes, unlocking reimbursement rates designed to support care in genuinely rural communities, where nearly a quarter of folks struggle to pay hospital bills.

These large urban hospitals don't need it.

They've got paying customers.

Burton Eller with the advocacy group National Grange says the practice is draining limited federal funding with rural health care losing out.

He adds that closing the loophole would protect rural safety net hospitals.

We've got to have a definition that we can't run a Mack truck through.

We've got to make sure that it's truly rural and underserved.

A decade ago, there were just three metro hospitals classified as administratively rural.

Today, more than 400.

Maine is on the verge of becoming the first state to ban large-scale data centers.

Julia Tilton reports.

Maine lawmakers have passed a temporary ban on data centers requiring 20 megawatts of power or more.

If approved by the governor, the ban would stay in place until November 2027, giving time to study data centers' impacts on utility rates and the environment.

Seth Barry, with the non-profit Our Power, says popular support for the ban is increasing and not just in Maine.

I think there's growing concern among a broad swath of the American public about rising electricity costs, about the lack of employment that data centers offer.

But Maine Chamber of Commerce CEO Patrick Woodcock says the ban could stifle rural development and derail clean energy projects.

Some projects, I think, could become collateral damage and look elsewhere.

We are 100 percent against this moratorium.

I'm Julia Tilton.

Struggling farms want relief from intellectual property laws because they force farmers to rely exclusively on authorized equipment dealers for repairs.

Peggy Kirk Hall is with Ohio State University's Agricultural and Resource Law Program.

There have been efforts by the companies to retain those rights over repair of that equipment and to make it more difficult for farmers to do the repairs themselves.

Right to repair laws allowing customers to fix their own equipment have been introduced in every state, but passed in only six.

Hulse's proposed legislation paused when the Farm Bureau reached agreements with some companies.

But she says farmers could be stuck waiting for an expensive company technician, while prices of inputs like fertilizer rise due to the Iran war.

It's a difficult time between fertilizer, between land values, market issues.

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, I'm Roz Brown.

For more rural stories, visit dailyyonder.com.