The High Price of No Health Insurance

From just the smell of their breath or the look on their faces, Karl Smith could tell which of his students at Dejean Middle School in West Contra Costa County were doing poorly in school.

“There were a number of students I’d have in a week who were visibly not well, and you just can’t learn if you’re sick,” said Smith, who recently quit his job at the Richmond school where he had taught English as a second language to immigrant children for almost 10 years. He said some of his students had teeth so rotten it interfered with their ability to form English words properly.
Uninsured
Nationwide studies show that 45 million people in the United States have no health insurance. In California, about 6.6 million are uninsured. On Monday, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will unveil his much-anticipated health care plan. It’s expected that the $2 billion in tax money that now goes to hospitals will shift to buy insurance for some of the state’s neediest.

The governor might have borrowed provisions from health care plans enacted by Vermont and Massachusetts last year that promised expanded health care coverage to their residents, or he might have drawn upon some of the provisions of the AllKids plan Illinois finalized, that would provide health care for all children in the state.

Whatever plan he chooses, the uninsured in the immigrant community will be watching closely, especially by Latinos for whom the problem is more common. In California, nearly 32 percent of Latinos are uninsured. And almost 20 percent of the state’s uninsured are children, the majority of them of Hispanic descent.

Among the undocumented, not having insurance is more complicated than money. Many simply don’t seek treatment because they fear they could be deported if their illegal status becomes known.

Many of Smith’s students were children of undocumented Latinos, so public health care programs as Medi-Cal and Healthy Kids were unavailable to them. And because private health insurance is too pricey, often the only health care facilities they could go to are community clinics. These clinics never ask clients about their legal status, not every immigrant knows this and they would understandably be scared to ask.

Often, fear of being reported “keeps them from going to community clinics,” said Fremont resident Agha Saeed, national chairman of the American Muslim Alliance. “For minor illnesses, they self-medicate. Some (undocumented Muslims) seek free advice from doctors while attending prayer services in mosques.

“But I know people with high blood-pressure or poor vision who are too scared to seek treatment because they do not want to call attention upon themselves,” Saeed said.

Study after study has shown that the longer the less educated and less affluent immigrant stayed in the U.S., the more likely he or she was to report declining health.

“Many folks won’t show up at our clinics until they are in dire straits,” observed Jane Garcia, chief executive officer at the Clinica de la Raza Health Project in Oakland. La Raza offers multi-service, low-cost health care to anyone who needs it.

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