Jennyfer Mesa: Beyond labor: Championing health care equity for Washington’s immigrants

By Jennyfer Mesa

Immigrants in our state have been systematically excluded from accessing basic preventative care and life-saving medical procedures because of their immigration status. The people who grow and process our food, build our homes and provide direct essential services for us all deserve access to affordable health care that treats us with respect and that meets our needs. Immigrants are more than just labor. We are a part of the fabric of the Washington state and Spokane communities.

The Washington Legislature earlier this year directed agencies to develop a health program that seeks to meet the needs of our low-income community members. While the new Apple Health expansion represents progress, the program is severely underfunded, and the work is far from complete. Getting access to an insurance card doesn’t guarantee openness, accessibility and culturally appropriate health services.

The Legislature put a down payment toward this program – this we greatly appreciate – but it is a fraction of the need. There are thousands of working families throughout this state that will have no services available at the current funding level. At best, the current program funding will cover only about 6,000 people statewide – a tiny fraction of who will be eligible.

Moreover, we have witnessed challenges for our community in registering because of a lack of digital access and literacy, confusion over health insurance, and continued fear of public charge. Addressing these challenges has been left up to community-based organizations and community health workers, yet there are currently no budgets in place for this critical work. To ensure the success of the immigrant health care expansion, a small but significant amount of funding must be directed to trusted immigrant-led community-based organizations with a long-standing history of serving immigrant populations. A groundbreaking health care initiative like this deserves a broad effort to inform immigrants of their new program so they can have the same access as all other people in our community. Trust is needed to make this program work. We need people who the community trusts, informing and encouraging them to apply. Insurance companies, government workers do not have trust.

The Health Benefits Exchange allocated only $100,000 out or their $3 million outreach budget to community-based organizations to go across the state. Nineteen counties didn’t receive funding. This outreach will fail unless we direct sufficient funding and support processes that immigrants trust – like immigrant-led community organizations to mobilize and fully engage in the outreach. Let us move at the speed of trust.

We know this effort will be a challenge, but we must focus some investment on community-based organizations that can build on the current program and help expand enrollment and health access. For example, one of many in the state – Latinos En Spokane – a trusted immigrant-led organization has demonstrated successes in health access and equity building in the face of a pandemic while supporting our uninsured population. We’ve seen the outcome of programs that are well intentioned and designed for us, but not by us that end up failing. Our access to health care is too important to not have people who understand and are from the community involved in all aspects of this important program.

And there needs to be a group from our immigrant community working with the state that can hold the agencies, the insurers, and the providers accountable to ensure the program provides high quality care at an affordable cost – for us and the state.

Our policymakers are now debating the supplemental budget and there is an opportunity take the next step. The House under the leadership of state Rep. Tim Ormsby has proposed allocating funds to ramp this program up. The Senate has not. Our state has a great opportunity to make this program a leader in the country. We encourage all people, our legislators and policymakers to take the next step to improve this program.

Jennyfer Mesa is executive director of Latinos En Spokane.