Latinos Being Left Behind in Health Care Overhaul

[DhhD]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's largest minority group risks being left behind by President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

Hispanics account for about one-third of the nation's uninsured, but they seem to be staying on the sidelines as the White House races to meet a goal of 6 million sign-ups by March 31.

Latinos are "not at the table," says Jane Delgado, president of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, a nonpartisan advocacy network. "We are not going to be able to enroll at the levels we should be enrolling at."

That's a loss both for Latinos who are trying to put down middle-class roots and for the Obama administration, experts say.

http://news.yahoo.com/latinos-being-left-behind-health-care-overhaul-172950345--finance.html

[TexasTowelie]

1. I think that some people won't learn the lesson until next year when they have to pay the penalty.

The bad news is that they won't learn about the penalty until March or April of 2015 when the enrollment period for 2015 is closed. Thus they will end up paying penalties for 2014 and 2015. In addition, the minimum tax penalty will increase between 2014 and 2015 so that the uninformed will be hit even harder on their 2015 tax filing than in 2014.

Therefore, we need to press for the open enrollment periods for 2015 to be extended through April 15, 2015 so that those who are not informed will only pay the penalty on their 2014 returns.

We really owe a big note of thanks to Rick Perry for screwing Texans over in multiple ways for refusing to expand Medicaid, but failing to promote the ACA to Texans so that money is not drained out of the state to pay tax penalties instead of allowing those people to spend that money to improve the state economy.

[DhhD]

2. When the Texas GOP took down the Navigator system, many people disconnected. They were disconnected

at their child's health clinic. Gregg Abbott is to blame. All Texas lawmakers should blame Abbott and the GOP publicly.

The losses will be bad. Food banks and charities will have to make up the differences in 2015. Keep in mind that our federal income taxes for ACA, have gone to other states Medicaid Exchange programs. And county hospital district taxes will have to go up.

[DhhD]

3. And the GOP in the 2015 Legislature, may try to punish Texans by moving funds out of Education

and over to Health and Human Services as they bullied and threatened in sessions during the recent past. Senator Davis tried to stop this.