AS MARCH 31 DEADLINE NEARS
LOS ANGELES – A Los Angeles-based community advocacy group – together with various community service organizations across California – will hold about 125 outreach events throughout the State to encourage enrollment among Asian communities before the March 31 deadline to sign up for health coverage.
During a press conference on Monday, March 17, Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles (Advancing Justice – LA) Executive Director Stewart Kwoh said that it is very important for people to sign up for health coverage before the end of the month because there will be penalties assessed for failure to do so.
According to Covered California officials, people who fail to obtain coverage by the end of open enrollment will be assessed with a penalty equivalent to $95 or 1 percent of their income, whichever is higher.
Advancing Justice – LA, an official Covered California Outreach and Education grantee and Certified Enrollment Entity (CEE), is working with at least 39 community groups, whom they have partnered with to outreach and educate the various ethnic communities about health care reform. Of these groups, 21 organizations are CEEs who have bilingual Certified Enrollment Counselors (CECs) working for them.
Prominent Filipino organizations such as Search to Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA), Filipino Migrant Center, and Filipino American Service Group Inc. (FASGI) are among Advancing Justice – LA’s host of community groups working to push for higher enrollment turnout among Filipinos.
All of the organizations are part of the Health Justice Network (HJN), a coalition coordinated by Advancing Justice LA, which seeks to push for greater health coverage and consciousness among ethnic communities.
Great turnout among Asians
Kwoh said that Advancing Justice – LA has worked hard to stay at the forefront of the statewide push to get Californians to enroll under health plans.
According to Kwoh, outreach, education, and enrollment efforts are underway in various community events like health fairs, religious activities, naturalization ceremonies, tax clinics, and other similar gatherings. He added that education efforts have reached out to 11 counties across 7 regions in California, and has been delivered in as many as 19 Asian languages.
Advancing Justice – LA officials said that since the beginning of open enrollment in Oct. 2013 until the end of Feb. 2014, as may as 880,082 people have enrolled under the health care marketplace. Of that number, 762,174 were eligible for government subsidy on their premiums; while 117,908 were not eligible for subsidy but enrolled anyway.
The breakdown of enrollees by ethnicity are as follows: Caucasians (40 percent), Asians (23 percent), Latinos (22 percent), African-Americans (3 percent) Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders (less than 1 percent), American Indian and Alaska Native (less than 1 percent), Mixed Race (6 percent), Other (3 percent) and Unknown (non-Latino at 4 percent).
Kwoh said that while it they may be “pleased” with “a good start” to the open enrollment period (where Asians ranked 2nd among enrollment rates), it is still “not yet a success” because there are still many left out in the dark.
According to state officials, as many as 600,000 Asians are estimated to be eligible for coverage. However, only 160,000 have only enrolled so far.
“We don’t want to get complacent,” Kwoh said.
Even if Asians ranked higher in enrollment rates than Latinos, Kwoh said that their coalition of organizations will not let up in getting more Asians to enroll for health coverage.
In the Chinatown area in LA, Advancing Justice – LA partnered with local institutions like the LA Public Library’s Chinatown branch, Library Foundation of Los Angeles, The California Endowment, Weingart Foundation, and uniHealth Foundation in serving the needs of the Chinese-speaking residents who are looking for affordable health care coverage.
The real penalty
Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees member Mike Eng was also on hand at the press conference, emphasizing the importance of getting more people to sign up for health coverage.
Eng said that Monday morning’s 4.4 earthquake was nature’s call to the looming open enrollment deadline.
“I think that was nature’s wake-up call, that we need to enroll as many people as possible. That was an earthquake of a reminder,” Eng said.
Eng said that getting health care is a matter of life and death, with Asians being the only ethnic bloc where cancer is the leading cause of death.
Around 27 percent of deaths among Asians are caused by some type of cancer. Cancer, heart disease, and stroke combine for 60 percent of deaths among Asians, Eng pointed out.
With expensive care required to treat such diseases, families with limited financial capacities cannot afford to shoulder these costs alone. Which is why health care coverage is all the more important, Eng said.
“Many of our relatives come to this country with very little money. And oftentimes, if it’s a choice between feeding their family, or sending their children to school, or treating themselves for healthcare. The last thing they will spend money on is themselves,” he said.
Eng, whose sister died in 2013 due to cancer, said that when he ran the emergency room of a prominent hospital in LA, he noticed that over half of the people who visited had no insurance. He also pointed out that 95 percent of them could have avoided death or debilitating diseases, had they started having health care many years earlier.
“The real penalty for not signing up is not just $95. But it’s to spend the life savings of you and your family members — of our family members — in the last two weeks to prolong our lives when it’s already too late,” Eng said.
“If you don’t want to waste hard-earned money at the end of life, why not spend a little bit every month — or even free — at the beginning of life, or when we’re relatively young,” he added.
Eng followed Kwoh’s lead and emphasized that low-income people, who are not able to apply for coverage under Covered California by March 31, can still apply for Medi-Cal.
According to Advancing Justice – LA staffers, people can still apply for Medi-Cal even after the March 31 deadline.
Kwoh urged people to contact Advancing Justice – LA or any of their partner organizations for more information about how they can avail of affordable health care.
For more information, visit www.advancingjustice-la.org or call (213) 977-7500. Advancing Justice is located at 1145 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90017.
SIPA is located at 3200 W Temple St, Los Angeles, CA 90026, can be reached through (213) 382-1819.
Filipino Migrant Center is located at 2325 E. 3rd St., Long Beach, CA 90814, can be reached through (562) 438-9515.
FASGI is located at 1711 W. Temple Street, Los Angeles, CA 90026, can be reached through (213) 483-9804.
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Midweek March 19-21, 2014 Sec A pg.1)
