Mark_Burrows/Courtesy photo
When faced with a health problem, the best approach is to address it before things get worse.
Addressing health care challenges in the public policy space, on the other hand, is a slow and laborious process that fails to consider the short-term needs of those who would benefit. And, when it comes to ensuring immigrants have health care coverage, too often the discussion is hijacked by extremist politicians who put political complacency before public health.
California is at the forefront of justice for immigrants, having become the first state in the country to offer health services to immigrants regardless of immigration status.
Colorado isn’t there yet, but we are moving (slowly) in the right direction, especially in the last few legislative sessions.
Thanks to the leadership of the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR), state legislators in 2021 created a path to allow undocumented people to receive reproductive health services through Medicaid.
State lawmakers built on that success this year with Cover All Coloradons (HB 22-1289). Among other things, the measure extends the Medicaid and Children’s Basic Health Plan surplus to low-income pregnant people and children, regardless of immigration status, but it’s important to understand the timing. The state department of Health Care Policy and Financing has until January 1, 2025 to provide that coverage.
And the threats are on the horizon. Three Republican members of the Colorado congressional delegation, Representatives Lauren Boebert, Doug Lamborn and Ken Buck, have latched onto the xenophobic notion that we should make health care more expensive and less access to services, through their support for the “No Federal Taxes” campaign. Dollars for the Law of Medical Insurance for Illegal Aliens”. (I’ll also note for the record that they chose to use the racist term “illegal alien” to describe who is affected by the bill.)
Colorado received a federal order Innovation exemption last year to implement the Colorado Option, a new health care plan to be offered in 2023 that aims to lower costs for consumers and reduce racial health disparities. The waiver allows the state to keep the money it saves the federal government by lowering costs (called pass-through funds) to provide subsidies to Coloradans, including undocumented immigrants who are not eligible for direct federal aid. through the Affordable Care Act. .
Buck bluntly stated that Colorado’s novel approach to cutting costs and expanding care is “a slap in the face to American taxpayers who get up, go to work and fight to survive.”
The fact that Congressman Buck thinks that undocumented immigrants don’t fit that description is a real slap in the face. The Latino community is critical to the economic vitality of communities throughout the Central Mountain region. Immigrants literally built these mountain resort communities, and our tourism economy depends on their labor.
Denying health coverage to those who work to keep our communities running is at odds with what United Voices of the Mountains and the United Voices Action Fund have learned in our outreach and organizing.
Nearly 6 in 10 Latino adults surveyed as part of our Colorado Latino Policy Agenda last year he supported expanding access to health insurance in Colorado, including for undocumented immigrants. That number jumped to 9 out of 10 when we surveyed Latino leaders. Why? Because our community is disproportionately and negatively affected by the current system. Consider:
- Hispanics/Latinos in Colorado were more likely to be uninsured (with the rate increasing from 10.1% in 2019 to 14.4% last year), even as the statewide uninsured rate decreased from 7, 9% in 2019 to 7.5% last year
- Latinas are three times more likely to be uninsured than non-Hispanics in Colorado, and Latino and Latino children are twice as likely to be uninsured
That can, and must, change.
Colorado is making progress by expanding coverage to cover pregnant people and children, regardless of immigration status. But we can’t stop until everyone, regardless of immigration status, can access health care, and we can’t wait until 2025 for this to happen.
Alex Sanchez is the Founder and Executive Director of Voces Unidas Action Fund, a Latino-led, Latino-created advocacy organization working in Garfield, Pitkin, Eagle, Summit, and Lake counties.