Laura Almonte doesn’t know what she’s going to do if her wheelchair breaks.
The 26-year-old Miami resident doesn’t have health insurance. So paying for any needed repairs or replacing the chair would be a great burden. The cost of maintaining or replacing her wheelchair would be covered only if she had a health insurance provider willing to give her coverage, despite her pre-existing condition.
Almonte is not alone in her fight to obtain affordable medical care. One fourth of Hispanics in the United States lack a healthcare provider, and of the 14 million Hispanic women in America, one in three is without health insurance, making them the largest group of women in America without coverage, according to a recent Pew Hispanic Center study.
The only way for Almonte to get healthcare is as a benefit through work, which was the case until she was laid off earlier this year, from her job with a social services agency. COBRA, a temporary extension of health coverage, would have been an option, but it was out of Almonte’s financial reach, costing her $450 per month.
“So I’m doing the obvious,” Almonte said. “I’m looking for a job. I need the health insurance, because my medicine is so expensive.”
Every day, Almonte gives herself shots, which cost hers about $2,500 each month. That price tag doesn’t include the cost of the physical therapy, which Almonte is in desperate need of.
“To pay for my medicine, I found a laboratory that charges me $230 for my medicine,” she said. “It’s still costly, but it’s less than $2,500.”
Irma Resendez, founder of Familia Unida, a bilingual California-based MS outreach organization, sees Almonte’s situation as a consequence of a broken system.
In July, Resendez co-wrote a letter to the California attorney general, asking him to look into health insurer practices. Many of the people Familia Unida serves have complained about having to fail on several medications, sometimes as many has five, before their healthcare providers will cover the medicine they need for their illnesses, Resendez said.
“There’s no oversight, no watchdog, looking at health insurer practices, and that’s a problem,” Resendez said.
Because health insurance providers dictate which medicines and treatments patients are able to access, many end up giving up on seeking any medical help, Resendez added.
Dr. Jane Delgado, president of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health in Washington D.C., echoed Resendez’s sentiment, saying that too many Hispanics end up being forced to let illness go untreated because of excessive health care costs.
“The important thing to remember is that the majority of adult Hispanics who are uninsured, are uninsured, because they’re working in jobs where they earn too much to qualify for public programs, but not enough to pay for private programs,” Delgado said. “So the reason they’re uninsured is because there’s no insurance product that’s within their means.”
Cody Moore is one such Hispanic. Earlier this year, the Columbia, Missouri-based graphic designer was forced to give up her own health insurance benefit offered by the company she worked for.
“The health insurance at my last job was about $150 per pay check,” Moore said. “I was paid every two weeks. So it was a total of $300 dollars a month.”
Moore, 26, couldn’t afford to add her husband, Levi, to her health insurance plan. So he went without it. But then, the company started having financial problems, and every employee had their salaries cut by 10 percent. So Moore dropped the insurance plan.
“I got the $300 back each month, so I could afford to pay my bills,” she said. “About a month after, I started having health problems. When I tried to go to a free clinic because I was a new patient, their policy was to schedule your appointment a month later. How much you pay at the clinic is also based on your income. It was determined even with my pay cut, I had to pay 40 percent of the cost of whatever they did at the appointment.”
For people who never had the option of obtaining health insurance, putting an emphasis on preventive care might be one way to alleviate the burden on an uninsured person, suggested Gabriela Renteria, of Centro Latino, a Mid-Missouri-based advocacy group that seeks to connect the Hispanic population to health, education and cultural resources within the community.
One of the challenges Renteria faces as a “promotora de salud” or health promoter is that many of the people she’s trying to reach don’t seek primary care until there is an emergency situation, she said. To combat that, Centro Latino tries to give classes dealing with different health issues, such as obesity prevention, HIV prevention and diabetes prevention, at least once a month.
Moore, who did have a primary care provider when she had health insurance, has decided to wait until it becomes affordable. In between the time she dropped her health insurance and set up the appointment at the free clinic, Moore found a job with another company. Now, she’s waiting until her health insurance kicks in so she can see a doctor. Her doctor’s appointment is set for November.
As for Almonte, she says if she doesn’t find a job offering some kind of health care benefit, she faces returning to her native Colombia to get the medical help she needs for her MS.
“I just became a citizen in April, and I thought I would be able to have access to better doctors and treatment here,” she said.