United Healthcare Workers West Works To Bring Awareness To Obamacare Eligibility
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The Late Ted Kennedy (Creative Commons)
In 2014, more than 5 million Californians will be eligible for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
Unfortunately, many of those that are eligible are also the most likely to not be aware of the benefits or their eligibility for the program.
The SEIU-UHW, or United Healthcare Workers West, is working to change that.
Thanks to a grant from the California Endowment, SEIU-UHW members have been able to enroll more than 1,000 people into public health plans like Medi-Cal and Healthy Families--public health insurance provided by the state of California to low income residents. They have also surveyed these families to find out what they thought were the biggest obstacles to their enrollment in these programs.
Of those surveyed, 13 percent had coverage but were dropped from the public plan. Additionally, 13 percent of those asked said they “didn’t understand how to enroll.” Another 11 percent said the “enrollment process was overwhelming", while 3 percent said a language barrier prevented them from enrolling.
These obstacles can be overcome with the proper education and assistance. This is why the SEIU-UHW is organizing an awareness drive called the “Let’s Get Healthy California Healthcare Enrollment Campaign.”
Anyone interested in volunteering with the campaign can call Elliott Petty at (213) 300-8871.
While the SEIU-UHW has embraced the new Affordable Care Act law, many unions have not.
The AFL-CIO at its convention three weeks ago passed a resolution calling the president’s hallmark achievement “highly disruptive” to some existing union insurance plans, and said it substantially changes the coverage available for “millions of covered employees and their families”.
The biggest problem that unions have with the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare”, is the affect they think it will have on “Multiemployer insurance plans”. Multiemployer plans are collectively bargaining between unions and multiple employers in the same industry.
These plans are portable, meaning an employee can go from job to job and still keep the same coverage. With a traditional plan, that same employee would lose coverage when they switched jobs—or would likely not have any insurance at all.
The unions feel these plans are threated because smaller employers may feel that they can get a better deal on the newly formed healthcare “exchanges” rather than the traditional multiemployer plans.
This takes away a benefit that the union is able to offer it’s members. The fear is without multiemployer health benefits, enrollment in unions will decrease dramatically.
Tim Schlittner, spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, said, “That’s a pressure that’s been created by this law and one of the unintended consequence. I don’t think anyone could have imagined that the ideal outcome of the law would be to cover millions of people by disrupting the good insurance that millions of people already have.”
Unfortunately or the AFL-CIO, there concerns are likely to fall on deaf ears to the majority of the public. As the largest union in the country, however, they may command the ear of the president.
So far the Obama administration has kept quite about union concerns, stating only that ““There is nothing in the Affordable Care Act that changes the law for multiemployer (Taft-Hartley) plans,” an administration official told POLITICO in an email. “We are committed to making the law work to make health care more effective and affordable for all Americans, including those covered by multiemployer plans.”
The Obama Administration may have to be more vocal about the bill to get ahead of the criticism and concerns much of the public has about the 2,000 page document.
Read more about Obamacare here.
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