A significant problem is sneaking up for rural Ohioans. Access to health care is disappearing.

Here in Trumbull County, the Steward Health Care saga continues with the fate of Trumbull Regional Medical Center and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital hanging in the balance.

While there does seem to be more reason for optimism locally with the emergence of Michigan-based Insight Health Systems as a potential operator and owner of the troubled Steward facilities, the same isn’t true elsewhere.

On Aug. 31, Community Memorial Hospital in Hicksville (Defiance County) closed its doors permanently after having temporarily suspended services. As The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Indiana, points out, Community Memorial was facing some of the same financial challenges being experienced by many rural hospitals.

Meanwhile, there’s another worry in the closure of hundreds of pharmacies.

Rite Aid and Walgreens are of particular concern.

Dave Burke, pharmacist, former state senator and executive director of the Ohio Pharmacists Association, told the Ohio Capital Journal the closure of so many pharmacies further reduces access to health care for many in the Buckeye State.

“We represent pharmacists,” he said of the Ohio Pharmacists Association. “Our organization exists to better the community through the practice of pharmacy. The concern for us is that these access issues (can harm that.) What does pharmacy mean if you have to go 20 miles?”

In fact, Burke said he believes these challenges could set back American health care by decades.

“There’s rumblings in Washington and rumblings in the FTC, but I’m afraid it might be too late to give people the access they deserve,” he told the Capital Journal.

Maybe it’s time for more than rumblings. Lawmakers and other public officials — both in Columbus and Washington, D.C. — MUST take seriously this threat to the well-being of rural residents. That must include a hard look at the role pharmacy benefit managers have played.

Politicians and bureaucrats can’t get away with believing the problem does not deserve their full attention because there are fewer of us to make a fuss.