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Trying to Help Thousands in Colonias Obtain Health Coverage
Trying to Help Thousands in Colonias Obtain Health Coverage
By ALEXA URA
EDINBURG — Sitting at an old picnic table in front of a dilapidated house, María Díaz, a hotel housekeeper, tells stories of the rejection that comes with living in impoverished Texas colonias...As she looks into buying private health insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act, which requires most people to obtain coverage in 2014, Ms. Díaz is facing a new type of rejection:. She probably does not make enough money to qualify for tax credits to afford coverage through the federal health insurance marketplace.
Thousands of residents of Texas’ colonias along the United States-Mexico border are in similar situations after falling into the “coverage gap” created when Texas’ Republican leadership declined to expand Medicaid eligibility for poor adults under the A.C.A., saying Medicaid was a broken system. Living in unincorporated subdivisions, where the uninsured rate is between 50 and 80 percent, colonia residents may be largely left with little hope of obtaining coverage...community-based organizations are working to educate residents on the federal law and walk them through the application process with the goal of helping them obtain a “hardship waiver” to be exempted from having to buy health insurance.
“We help people go through the application process, even if we can figure out pretty quickly that they’re in the gap,” said Rachel Udow, the program director for Migrant Health Promotion, a Weslaco-based group with six full-time navigators charged with helping individuals sign up for health insurance through the federal marketplace. “Because at the end, they’ll receive the determination that essentially says they’re in the gap, which they’ll then be able to use to access the waiver.”
The hardship waiver exempts those living in the coverage gap — individuals who make less than $11,490 a year or a family of four making less than $23,550 — from paying a penalty when they file their 2014 taxes.
- more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/us/trying-to-help-thousands-in-colonias-obtain-health-coverage.html
By ALEXA URA
EDINBURG — Sitting at an old picnic table in front of a dilapidated house, María Díaz, a hotel housekeeper, tells stories of the rejection that comes with living in impoverished Texas colonias...As she looks into buying private health insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act, which requires most people to obtain coverage in 2014, Ms. Díaz is facing a new type of rejection:. She probably does not make enough money to qualify for tax credits to afford coverage through the federal health insurance marketplace.
Thousands of residents of Texas’ colonias along the United States-Mexico border are in similar situations after falling into the “coverage gap” created when Texas’ Republican leadership declined to expand Medicaid eligibility for poor adults under the A.C.A., saying Medicaid was a broken system. Living in unincorporated subdivisions, where the uninsured rate is between 50 and 80 percent, colonia residents may be largely left with little hope of obtaining coverage...community-based organizations are working to educate residents on the federal law and walk them through the application process with the goal of helping them obtain a “hardship waiver” to be exempted from having to buy health insurance.
“We help people go through the application process, even if we can figure out pretty quickly that they’re in the gap,” said Rachel Udow, the program director for Migrant Health Promotion, a Weslaco-based group with six full-time navigators charged with helping individuals sign up for health insurance through the federal marketplace. “Because at the end, they’ll receive the determination that essentially says they’re in the gap, which they’ll then be able to use to access the waiver.”
The hardship waiver exempts those living in the coverage gap — individuals who make less than $11,490 a year or a family of four making less than $23,550 — from paying a penalty when they file their 2014 taxes.
- more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/us/trying-to-help-thousands-in-colonias-obtain-health-coverage.html
How One Governor Is Trying To Avoid Responsibility For Denying Health Care To 600,000 Poor People
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024558127
