Obamacare advocates are making a new surge to get Latinos to sign up for healthcare, with the deadline for open enrollment a few weeks away.
The push comes as the Obama administration is trying to reach the remaining uninsured to help boost enrollment figures. About 8.5 million people have chosen plans through healthcare.gov, used by about 38 states, and the deadline for open enrollment is Jan. 31.
“The Latino community still suffers from disparities [in healthcare],” said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, on a Wednesday call with reporters. “With better access to annual checkups and many cancer screenings, we can begin to close these gaps.”
Since Obamacare has been implemented, about 17 million Americans have received healthcare coverage, 4 million of whom are Latinos.
But administration officials on a Wednesday call with reporters couldn’t say how many of those 4 million received coverage through Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces or other means such as the expansion of Medicaid or getting insurance through their work.
For the marketplace, self-reporting of race and ethnicity is voluntary.
Advocates said they want to expand outreach to the Latino community and focus on the subsidies to help pay down the cost of health insurance.
About 80 percent of Latinos “don’t know that financial help is there,” said Anne Filipic, president of Enroll America, a pro-Obamacare group. “This truly is an example of disconnect in terms of the awareness of what is available for the uninsured community.”
The administration set a modest goal for signups for 2015 of roughly 10 million people to sign up and pay for healthcare coverage by the end of 2016. That is far below the original estimate of more than 20 million from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
