November 11, 2024
Health care coverage now accessible to uninsured people
Indigenous farmworkers may qualify for new Kaiser Permanente coverage.
Gabriela Santiago speaks with a client about health insurance coverage.
Indigenous men, women, and children in Ventura County, California, and wherever Kaiser Permanente provides care in California will have greater access to health care in 2025. Kaiser Permanente’s Community Health Care Program provides a coverage subsidy for people with low incomes who have no access to a comprehensive employer-sponsored health plan, do not qualify for Covered California, and who earn slightly too much to qualify for Medi-Cal. The goal of the program is to improve the health of individuals and communities by expanding health coverage and access to more people.
Lidia Lopez welcomes people who need her help enrolling in health insurances.
To reach people in need of health care coverage, Kaiser Permanente has awarded a $200,000 1-year grant to Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, or MICOP, for language-appropriate health care enrollment services. Trained health navigators fluent in Indigenous languages like Mixteco and Zapoteco, as well as Spanish and English, can break the language barrier and ultimately help people get necessary care.
According to Arcenio Lopez, executive director of MICOP, the health care enrollers/navigators must ask for personal details to determine eligibility, complete client enrollment documentation, and help newly covered individuals navigate through their first contact with a health care team.
Arcenio Lopez, executive director, Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, leads a team of CHCP enrollers.
Lopez is passionate about organizing Indigenous people in the community, many of whom are farmworkers. “Health access in this country is pretty far from accessible for everyone,” he said.
“We need to recognize that access to health care should be a basic human right. We need to understand the historical context: how Indigenous people have been oppressed not just in this country but throughout the continent, and how they became a vulnerable population without access to quality health care, and that they are the backbone of the California agriculture industry.”
MICOP health care enroller/navigators help uninsured people access full coverage.
MICOP enrollers are available to assist people with open enrollment from November 1, 2024, through the end of January 2025 to help people of all backgrounds obtain health care coverage, either Medi-Cal, Covered California, or through CHCP, depending on their qualifications. Kaiser Permanente’s CHCP will subsidize coverage for members for a full range of primary and specialty care needs.
Enrollment services will be provided at MICOP, located at 135 Magnolia Ave. in Oxnard, California. To reach MICOP by phone, please call 805-247-1188. Anyone is welcome to access the organization’s services, especially Indigenous people in the community.
