Monday, November 10, 2014

Dreamers accept poorer health to protect family. Now, perhaps Democrats can understand why going to the polls was meaningless.

November 9, 2014

lian Saldana (click here) turned down Obamacare coverage once, and she might do it again.
With sign-ups set to resume Saturday, the 23-year-old Covina resident and her younger sister are hesitant to enroll because their parents are immigrants who are not citizens and therefore ineligible for benefits under the Affordable Care Act.
Saldana, an after-school tutor, admits she could put the insurance to good use for a checkup, but she worries about putting her parents at risk or creating a rift at home.
"We've always done things together as a family," she said.
The Saldana sisters are among roughly 600,000 Latinos in California who remain uninsured — despite qualifying for subsidized coverage under the federal health law. Latinos outnumber whites and Asians among the 1.3 million Californians who are eligible for federal aid and lack private health coverage....
The US has to stop breaking up families. This is actually a pubic health problem. 600,000 people are at risk for disease in a way other Americans are not. The last initiative for any public health policy is to leave people outside the health care infrastructure. 
One of the complaints of so many on the political right wing is the inclusion of undocumented workers enrolled on Medicaid. The US has always provided health care to every person within it's borders to insure public health. Now, generations are left outside the infrastructure? 
The deportations need to stop and families allowed to stay together. This is a health care emergency that needs to end before there is actually a health care emergency.