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Megan Messerly is a health care reporter for Politico covering health politics and policy in the states. Before joining Politico, Messerly covered politics and health policy for The Nevada Independent. She got her start in journalism covering politics as an intern at the San Francisco Chronicle and as a reporter at the Las Vegas Sun. Messerly graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a double major in English and media studies. She was born and raised in Orange County, Calif. Her project for the National Fellowship will explore the mining industry’s outsize impact on the health care landscape of small, rural towns. The immense pull of mining companies on these communities — and, by extension, their health care systems — offers a startling and telling portrait of the vulnerabilities of a national health insurance landscape heavily reliant on employer-sponsored health insurance to subsidize Medicare and Medicaid rates.
Articles
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Mining's dangers and boom-bust cycles create health care challenges in small towns, exposing the vulnerability of mining communities and shedding light on broader rural health insurance issues.