About one in three Latinos is uninsured, and Hispanic families are among the groups that can most benefit from the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of health care coverage. Yet more than half — 54 percent — of Latinos in Colorado could not name one specific aspect of the law, such as the fact that parents can insure their children until the age of 26 (only 18 percent knew), or that insurance companies cannot discriminate due to a pre-existing condition (only 14 percent knew).
“At this point, information is relatively low but the desire to be engaged in the process is very high,” said Dr. Gabriel Sanchez, Director of Research for Latino Decisions, who conducted the survey for Adelante con la Salud: Latino Health Care Engagement Project, which seeks to inform the state’s Hispanics on the new law.
A key finding was that only a mere 6 percent of Colorado Latinos knew about the health care exchanges — the main mechanism created by the law so families can purchase affordable insurance. This is significant, because the law was set up so that health care costs would gradually go down as millions of Americans sign up for health insurance through the exchanges.
Currently, the high cost of health care has taken its toll among Latino families, according to the poll. Forty-three percent of Hispanics in Colorado say they have used up savings to pay medical bills, and almost one in three say they can’t cover their basic needs due to medical costs. Forty-five percent of Latinos surveyed say they rely on home remedies to defray medical costs, almost three in ten skip treatments and more than a quarter of Latinos did not get their prescriptions filled due to costs.
When asked how they would prefer to obtain information on the ACA, Latinos surveyed said hospitals (27 percent) followed by doctors (21 percent). ”We cannot assume doctors are informed about the Affordable Care Act,” said Sanchez, who is also the Assistant Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico. Giving the medical community key talking points, said Sanchez, is necessary to avoid medical doctors giving “misinformation” about the new health care law.
Read more at http://nbclatino.com/2013/05/21/over-half-of-latinos-dont-know-key-aspec...