This post is a submission to the Hastings Center’s Values and Health Reform Connection, a new group blog on American values and why they matter in health reform.
We asked Deeana Jang, JD, Policy Director of the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, to write a guest post for submission to The Hastings Center: The Values and Health Reform Connections.
As Americans, we value a health care system where people are treated fairly. We expect that if we work hard and pay our taxes, we’ll have access to that most basic human right — getting care when we need it. But for millions of people in this country who work hard and pay their fair share of taxes, that’s not the reality.
Many immigrants who lawfully entered the United States are working at low-wage jobs without health insurance. They struggle, as generations of immigrants to the United States did, to get by each day, to pay the rent and put food on the table. And they are often forced to go without the health care they need because they cannot pay a doctor.
Imagine what it would be like to wait five years to get a cancer screening. Think about what you might do if you had a sick child but could not afford to see a doctor. Or imagine having diabetes and waiting five years to get regular treatment. This is unacceptable.
Today in America, legal immigrants who qualify for Medicaid services are unfairly denied access to the program for five years even though they pay taxes like everyone else. If we value fairness as a society, we must provide children and adults with access to essential, preventive care that keeps people healthy.
Why? When we prevent legal residents who diligently pay taxes from accessing routine medical care, it leads to an inefficient, costly and wasteful system of treating patients who are forced to seek care in an emergency room. It’s an expensive and ineffective way to treat conditions that require ongoing management like diabetes, heart disease or even cancer.
Letting legal immigrants pay into the health care system and get access to the care they need will bring down health care costs for the entire nation. It will allow for true access to health care for everyone who needs it and save money for our health care system in the long-run. Taxpaying legal immigrants deserve timely access to essential medical care.
If our core values as a nation are the concepts of fairness and justice, we must reflect that in the reforms of our health care system. It’s time to do what’s right and end the wait for health care.
As head of the D.C. office, Deeana Jang leads APIAHF’s policy work which includes improving access to health coverage, improving quality of care including linguistically and culturally competent health care services, promoting a diverse health care workforce, improving data on Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander health, and increasing investment in community-driven health strategies.
Thank you for this great post. I’m going to make a listing of bloggers that write about this sort of thing, please email me.