1/23/14, "Hispanics' Obamacare headache: A problem of costs, access," Detroit News, Daniel Garza, opinion
"The White House’s failed roll-out of its
Spanish-language health care website, CuidadoDeSalud.gov, is already a
laughing stock. Much like its English language counterpart, the site is
filled with technical issues, mistranslations, and links to English-only
pages and forms.
But the joke is on
Hispanics and Latinos like myself. Beyond the faulty launch of the
federal website, the Affordable Care Act penalizes the Hispanic-American
community in Michigan in several serious ways. The end result is that a
law that was supposed to help us actually makes affordable and quality
health care even harder to find.
One issue
that has received too little attention is how Obamacare affects patient
choice and doctor-patient relationships. These are major issues for
Hispanic-Americans. According to the Census Bureau, we’re the least
likely demographic to seek out medical attention. A full 42 percent of
Hispanics don’t visit the doctor even once a year. When we do go to see a
doctor, we’re very picky.
The National Hispanic Medical Association
reports that Hispanics prefer doctors who “appreciate [our] culture and
understand [our] families’ dynamics and [our] traditions.”
Unfortunately,
our options are limited by the fact that only 5 percent of doctors are
Hispanic. Yet that’s where Obamacare kicks in and makes things worse.
Because the law imposes so many expensive mandates and regulations on
health insurance, the most affordable health care plans no longer
include the large networks that give us the most choice.
For
Hispanics, this limits our already-strained access to the doctors we
want and worsens our culture’s chronic doctor shortages.
But
this isn’t even the worst of the Affordable Care Act’s problems.
Despite what we were promised, the Affordable Care Act is surprisingly
unaffordable.
Obamacare will simply be too
expensive for many Hispanics. The problem for us stems from the law’s
over-reliance on the young. This directly affects the Hispanic-American
community because we are significantly younger than the average
American. In fact, our median age is 27—the age that’s most severely
harmed by the Affordable Care Act’s premium increases.
This
is either an unfortunate coincidence or a cruel joke. Either way, it
couldn’t be worse for Hispanics’ financial health. A recent analysis by
Forbes concludes that the average 27 year-old’s health care premium has spiked by 92 percent for men and 102 for women in Michigan since
Obamacare took effect.
These skyrocketing
prices are bad news for the more than 436,000 Hispanics and Latinos who
call Michigan home. Many of us will struggle to find the cash to pay
much more than we already do, even after subsidies. Thanks to the
individual mandate, we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place: We can
either pony up the cash or pay a penalty that will total nearly $700 for
individuals and over $2,000 for families.
This
litany of problems makes it seem like Hispanic-Americans’ needs weren’t
taken into account by the Affordable Care Act’s architects. Surely we
deserved better. We have the highest uninsured rate in the nation, at
just under 30 percent, and yet Obamacare gives us little reason to join
its ranks.
Then again, it would be hard to
sign up for Obamacare online even if we wanted to. The broken website
makes a mockery of the Spanish language—and that’s only the latest of
Obamacare’s broken promises to our community."
"Daniel Garza is the executive director of the LIBRE Initiative." via Richard Fernandez
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