Affordable Care Supports Health of Latinas and Our Families

Affordable Care Su
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By: Cristina Aguilar

Being able to afford an insurance plan gives hard working families the ability to seek preventative services when they need to. Latinas and our families have historically struggled to obtain high quality health care. The Affordable Care Act has helped millions of uninsured people access health care coverage. It has closed the huge gap of the number of Latinos who are unable to get critical services when they need them because they don’t have the money to pay for care out of pocket.

A study prior to the passage of the ACA found that 32% of Latinos were uninsured – higher than any other racial or ethnic group. Without coverage, many people were left without a regular doctor or the ability to get preventive care resulting in poorer health overall.

We have seen huge strides with the passage of the ACA. Lack of coverage results in huge disparities in the number of people with chronic health conditions who are able to manage their health. By delaying care, they suffer and so do their families. The ACA also includes a provision that allows more young people to obtain insurance by allowing people under 26 years old to remain on their parents’ insurance. We know that prior to the ACA 20% of low-income youth in the Latino community went a year or more without seeing a doctor, so this provision has made a difference in our community.

A key tenet of the ACA that has helped to ensure that people are not forced to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table and being able to see a doctor is the fact that tax credits are available to help low and moderate income individuals and families purchase health insurance. This is the provision that was challenged in King v. Burwell, a Supreme Court case that looked at the ACA provision allowing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide tax subsidies to individuals and families who purchase insurance from the federally-facilitated health insurance exchanges. The decision affirmed that tax credits should be made available for low-income individuals in both state and federally created exchanges.

About 85 percent of people who are using the exchanges qualify for subsidies based on their income. This helps them to pay for coverage and make sure that if they get sick or if they have a chronic health condition that they will have the support to take care of themselves and not risk being pushed further into poverty just to seek needed care.

Getting health care coverage through the exchanges has allowed so many Latinas and our families to take steps to end health disparities and to be healthier and more productive people overall. That’s why efforts like the “My Health, My Voice”, a program to increase enrollment and ensure health literacy for newly insured women is so important. We need to build on the gains made and continue to close the gap on women in our community who go without essential health care due to a lack of affordability.

We should continue to look for ways to expand access to critical services, including stopping attacks on reproductive health care. The ACA has helped close the loop on contraception and well woman visits, but a political compromise was made that eliminated health coverage for abortion. Health insurance should cover the full range of care that a woman might need and that includes abortion care. Efforts are being made at the federal level to address this unnecessary limitation and ensure that regardless of income or insurance type, people can afford safe, quality abortion care when they need it.

We need to ensure that lawmakers at every level stand with women and families by helping to eliminate health disparities and getting rid of politically motivated limits on reproductive health care. While we still have much work to do to reach health equity for all, we have made important gains towards achieving this critically important goal.

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Cristina Aguilar is the executive director of the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR). Cristina co-founded the People of Color Caucus for One Colorado, the state LGBT advocacy organization and sits on their Political Action Committee. She was a mayoral appointee to the Mayor of Denver’s LGBT Commission, where she was twice elected as Vice-Chair and also served as Public Policy Chair.

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