“Latinos are going to the polls keeping health care in mind and their experience with Covid in mind and voting for change for their health and well-being…”
As we head into the final days of this election cycle, House Democrats continue to communicate with Latino voters across the country on issues that matter most to them, including their top concern: health care.
And now, more than ever, Latino voters are ready to make their voices heard at the ballot box. As NBC reports, “the pandemic’s disproportionate effect on Latinos has forced a reckoning of the gaps in health care coverage” making “health insurance, the cost and the availability of coverage… top-tier issues for Hispanics this election cycle.”
“Washington Republicans have a track record of putting the interests of their drug and insurance company donors over the health and economic well-being of hard-working Latino families across the country,” said DCCC Spokesperson Fabiola Rodriguez. “This November Latino voters will make their voices heard at the ballot box by voting against a party that has voted time after time to gut their health care in midst of a deadly pandemic.”
NBC: For Latino voters, health care is a top issue as Obamacare gains reverse under Trump
KEY POINTS:
- […] more than 11.2 million Latinos in the United States who don’t have health insurance—in 2019, almost 17 percent of Hispanics didn’t have health coverage, the highest of any group. That was the figure from before the pandemic, which was already up from 10.22 million in 2016.
- Now experts say that number is likely even higher given the pandemic’s disproportionate toll on the community.
- As people lose work and health care benefits, it’s become an even tougher task to ensure residents get health coverage access, said Joe Ibarra, co-chair of EnrollSA, a coalition of organizations trying to boost insurance enrollment in the San Antonio area.
- “In Texas, there is no expanded Medicaid. The rules are really harsh. Folks are losing coverage as a result of losing their jobs and they are left without good options,” Ibarra told NBC News.
- Latinos gained the most under the Affordable Care Act after it was enacted in 2010, with about 4 million adults and 600,000 children obtaining health care coverage by 2016.
- As more people lose health insurance, the cost and the availability of coverage are top-tier issues for Hispanics this election cycle. Latinos rank it even ahead of jobs and the economy and place more importance on it than they did about this time in 2016.
- “Latinos are going to the polls keeping health care in mind and their experience with Covid in mind and voting for change for their health and well-being,” Alberto Gonzalez, senior policy strategist at UnidosUS, a Latino civil rights organization, said.
- Early in the election cycle, the GOP was pointing to record low unemployment rates Latinos were experiencing as reason to re-elect Trump, while Democrats countered that Hispanics were not economically stable if many had to work more than one job to make ends meet.
- But the pandemic’s disproportionate effect on Latinos has forced a reckoning of the gaps in health care coverage, especially in states like Texas with a large Hispanic population.
- Hispanics have been clobbered by the pandemic physically and economically. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Covid-19 cases are 2.8 times higher for Latinos than non-Hispanic whites. Hospitalizations are 4.6 times higher and Latino deaths are 1.1 times higher than for non-Hispanic whites.
- A recent poll of Latinos for UnidosUS showed that almost 6 in 10 (59 percent) respondents were very concerned and another 39 percent were somewhat concerned that the Supreme Court would undo the Affordable Care Act.
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