SACRAMENTO, Cal
“Once you have (insurance), you actually still don’t have it, because it’s still a struggle to find someone,” the 20-year-old college student from Bellflower said.
Uribe isn’t alone. Even though Latinos make up nearly half of California’s 12.5 million Medi-Cal enrollees, a report by the independent California HealthCare Foundation found that 36 percent of the Spanish-speaking Medi-Cal population has been told that a physician won’t take them, compared to 7 percent of the overall Medi-Cal population. Even those who speak both English and Spanish reported similar difficulty accessing doctors.
“The numbers are very, very shocking,” said Sarah de Guia, executive director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, a multicultural health advocacy group.
De Guia said the study doesn’t explain why Latinos — whether they speak English or Spanish — are being turned away at higher rates, but public policy officials say the biggest obstacle is finding doctors who are willing to take the lower payments offered by Medi-Cal. Language barriers also play a role.
The study, which compared people on Medi-Cal to those with employer-sponsored health insurance, found Latinos and Asian-Americans reported the highest rate of needing language assistance to understand their doctor. Specifically, 28 percent of Asian-Americans said their doctor does not listen carefully, compared to 15 percent of all Medi-Cal enrollees.
Shana Alex Charles, a research scientist at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research who helped conduct the study, said there may not be enough providers who speak Spanish — or there could be an overall shortage of providers in communities of color.
