As the Affordable Care Act slowly starts to get implemented, one group of employees that is excluded from benefiting from the major health care reform is undocumented farmworkers.
This distinct outcome may also extend to the farmworkers not in the country illegally.
Although many labor contractors will likely have to offer employee health insurance because of the ACA, there is a strong possibility farmworkers, who are some of the nation’s lowest-paid earners, will not be able to afford an employer’s plan.
“Most will be in the same position they are in now,” said Lupe Sandoval, managing director of the California Labor Contractors Association.
Within the agricultural industry, labor contractors, ranchers and growers typically do not offer health insurance to seasonal workers, whether domestic or foreign.
Labor contractors who employ farmworkers on a temporary basis are expected to still fall under the ACA mandate. The amount of workers they employ on a yearly basis is likely to reach the full-time equivalency of 50 employees or more, Sandoval said.
Access to services
Currently, many migrant and domestic farmworkers utilize community clinics and healthcare providers in Mexico. They also tend to access services at lower levels than the general population.
Low education and income levels, and cultural barriers such as reluctance to seek preventative care services, are also commonly found within the farmworker community, said Marc Schenker, director of the Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety at the University of California, Davis.
While the Obama administration may not have given much consideration to insuring seasonal farmworkers, others have.
“We have foreseen this as quite a challenge for our industry,” said Wendy Fink-Weber, senior director of communication for the Western Growers Association.
A federal designation allows the association to act as a health insurance broker for its California- and Arizona-based members.
About 20 percent of the association’s field workers are covered by health plans, Fink-Weber said.
The plan was designed to be “limited” in scope, and had an average $50,000 yearly benefit ceiling, Fink-Weber said. Yet the federal waiver that allows them to provide such services will expire July 1, 2O14.
“There is a whole group of people and workers that we have no way of insuring,” Fink-Weber said. ““The law was not written with these workers in mind.”
Barriers to services
An estimated 500,000 farmworkers are employed in the state, the vast majority of whom are undocumented.
Migrant farmworkers from Mexicali who legally work stateside aren’t eligible for Mexican public health insurance, said Adriana Buelna, a community outreach worker with Ventanilla de Salud.
But under a program instituted more than three years ago by former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, field workers could access government provided health care. Coverage under the program lasts three years.
Yet there is some question whether the program will continue under the new administration, Buelna said.
Ventanilla de Salud, which is funded by the Mexican government, provides healthcare referrals and resources for Mexican citizens in the Imperial Valley.
The Mexican government has also been setting aside funding to help people with emergency health care needs, Buelna said.
Such assistance is available once a year to those who qualify, Buelnas said. About 100 people a year have come to the agency requesting these services,.
Unfamiliarity with available services also tends to restrict the number of people that seek them out. Many tend to find the process of accessing services overwhelming and often back out of it.
“That’s what we have to prevent,” Buelnas said.
Improving access to services
Imperial Irrigation District Local Entity funds have allowed the Institute for Socioeconomic Justice to serve as a depository of health-related resources and education for low-income Valley residents.
A pair of grants has allowed the institute to act as a referral service and resource center for the uninsured farmworker community as well, said director Eric Reyes.
The Brawley-based institute has helped thousands access medical resources.
“They’re not the best advocates themselves,” Reyes said. “They get cheated all the time.”
Despite the availability of various funding sources that have and continue to help domestic and migrant farmworkers access healthcare services, more could be done to reduce the health disparities found with the farmworker community.
Yet obstacles remain.
“Those things happen because of politics,” UC Davis’ Schenker said, “and we’re talking about people that don’t have political power.”
Editor's note: This article was updated to correct information that had been previously published regarding the health benefits plan offered by the Western Growers Association.
Staff Writer, Copy Editor Julio Morales can be reached at 760-337-3415 or at jmorales@ivpressonline.com
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