AUSTIN (KXAN)- Almost half of all Texas counties have nowhere to get prenatal care or deliver a baby and more than a quarter of rural mothers live more than 30 minutes away from the nearest provider. This means these mothers are living in a “maternity care desert.” Living in a “maternity care desert” contributes to delayed prenatal care, increased pregnancy complications and worse delivery outcomes.  Despite these factors, more rural labor and delivery units are shutting down due to high costs and staffing issues.  Eleanor Klibanoff, the Texas Tribune's women's health reporter, interviewed with KXAN’s Will DuPree to provide insight about the plan proposed by rural providers and advocates to keep these units open. Watch the full interview in the video player above or read an edited transcription of the conversation below. Will DuPree: More than two decades ago, the Texas Legislature passed reforms to revive the state's rural health care system. However, access to maternal health care in those areas is still very limited. What's contributing to that lack of options? Eleanor Klibanoff: Texas is a giant state, and our population is very spread out in not necessarily even distribution, and so it's hard to have services in every rural community. But part of what is leading to more rural hospitals stopping delivering babies and sort of exacerbating these geographic disparities is, according to this group, at least, the fact that Medicaid, which pays for most births in rural areas, doesn't pay enough to sort of have these hospitals break even. It's hard to recruit providers, and it's hard to sort of make it financially viable to continue to deliver babies in these rural areas where women are having babies.  DuPree: And there is a package of proposals that you wrote about that are on the table aimed at addressing this very issue, and then they're called the Rural Texas Maternal Health Rescue Plan. Talk to us about what's included in those. Klibanoff: Right. This was from about 40 different groups, rural hospitals, providers, advocacy groups, community groups, local leaders who came together and are really concerned. They feel like there's urgent action needed from the legislature to not even fully restore maternal health care in these areas, but just sort of stem the bleeding and stabilize what's left. They propose the main thing would be changing the way Medicaid pays for births in rural areas, rather than paying a fixed fee, sort of paying based on what it actually costs these hospitals to deliver those babies, as well as incentivizing providers to work in rural areas with more loan forgiveness and other financial incentives, just to sort of try to make it make sense for these hospitals and providers to keep delivering babies. DuPree: Yeah, sticking with Medicaid. You mentioned that a couple of times there, but a major priority in the plan is to improve that here in Texas. Can you give us more detail on how Medicaid applies and what changes could be made to keep some of these units open? Klibanoff: So statewide, Medicaid pays for about half of all births in Texas, but in rural areas, it's much higher, more like 60 to 90% of births in some areas are paid for through Medicaid. So, any changes to Medicaid would inevitably really change the landscape for maternal health and sort of the financial viability of maternal health. So these groups feel like if Texas increased how much they pay for Medicaid for these births in rural areas, it would make it easier for these providers and these hospitals to balance out what is typically a pretty low number of births each year. But there's enough birth that these women need a place to give birth, but to staff a labor and delivery unit around the clock, 365 days a year is pretty expensive, and Medicaid is one place they feel like they could make some changes. DuPree: I would imagine that Texas lawmakers are paying pretty close attention to this, especially going into the next regular session in January. How does that plan that we mentioned want the legislature to address Rural Women's Health Care? Klibanoff: I mean, their hope is that these are bipartisan solutions that everyone can kind of get behind. There was a lot of attention last session on women's health because it was the first session since Texas had banned nearly all abortions. These groups that put together this plan feel like if lawmakers are looking for something else to sort of hang their hats on, to help women and babies in Texas and sort of continue that commitment that they've made to women and babies. They hope that investing in rural maternal health could be sort of the issue of the session on that front and the board will come together around this issue that they hope they see as common sense solutions.