Previously this past week Team Farmworker had started a new phase and did some transitioning from doing health fairs to prepping for focus groups. On Thursday Team Farmworker attended training at the North Carolina Farmworkers Project house for a few hours to go over and learn about health insurance. This training was for us to learn more about health insurance and how it works and is available to the NC Migrant Farmworkers. We will all participate in conducting surveys on the farmworkers experience with enrollment of the Affordable Care Act and the ability to use it and the overall quality they received from having the health insurance.
Within the U.S. there is a law now that states every current living citizen must have health insurance or is subjected to pay a fine at the end of the year. This law came into effect when the creation of the Affordable Care Act passed. This law includes all migrant farmworkers as well and which if they do not enroll in health insurance there fine is ~$58 per month that they do not have active health insurance or a total of $695 for the entire year or 2.5% of their income; whichever is greater. These are the rates for 2016 which have risen tremendously from last year’s 2015 amounts. The amounts for 2015 were $325 per person for the year or 2% of the annual household income, whichever was the greater value. With this fee and in my experience they should be able to get a cheaper health insurance rate and receive health insurance and on top of that SAVE money each year rather than not enrolling. With that being said, the farmworkers do not understand how health insurance works, more less understand that they can receive health insurance and still save more money than they would be charged for not having health insurance.
With this process for migrant farmworkers it is very vital for them to understand the best they can about health insurance and what exactly they are receiving when they sign up. Data will be collected on this type of information from each Farmworker at the end of the year to understand what they know about health insurance better and in what way it affected them by having the health insurance. This survey has been created through the North Carolina Farmworkers Project as an education initiative to learn what actually is helping the migrant farmworkers to enroll yearly, for them to understand the process and how to utilize their health insurance to be best possible use. With health insurance, being able to understand and comprehend the enrollment process, the charges, and the options of health plans from under just the ACA itself is a difficult process. For the average American citizen it takes some time to sit down and look over options, and to decide what’s the most affordable and convenient health insurance to have. Majority of Americans grow up having health insurance and once graduating high school or starting college is when most citizens enroll in their own health insurance and in which they are already educated on the process. With the migrant farmworkers they do not have these type of polices back home in Mexico and are very uneducated on the health insurances here so for them to understand how health insurance works is a very difficult and sometimes frustrating part. They might feel as if they come here to work legally to make more money for their family back home but then they have all these guidelines to follow and which makes them spend money that they really would rather keep. The extent the farmworkers will go before seeing a doctor to receive any type of health care is unbelievable. As U.S. citizens might say that we push our limits on what we do and try to hold off as long as possible but the migrant farmworkers hold off to an tremendous extent that sometimes even leads to death because of heat stroke.
Once the migrant farmworkers come to the U.S. there are specific periods when they can enroll into health insurances. If they come outside of this specific time they have a term of sixty days to enroll or they will receive a fine of every month they are not enrolled. The migrant farmworkers only need to enroll in health insurance if they will be staying longer than three months. This is a time when the farmworkers have to figure out how to enroll and what exactly they want to choose to enroll in. Once time comes and they leave to go back home they have to un-enroll themselves as well or they will continue to be billed for months they are not here and which will create problems for them once they come back. After this process comes tax filing season where every farmworker who enrolled in health insurance must file taxes and which also is another brick wall they face because a lot of tax agencies do not know how to do this properly and so finding an agency who does know can be frustrating if they are at a different camp and a new area and can’t remember where they filed the previous year. With tax agencies not sure of how to file these taxes properly can end in tax fraud which is another negative aspect. As you can see there are a lot of things that can create multiple problems and which they sure would not enjoy to deal with.
When the ACA was passed the NC Farmworker Project started working with and helping all of the migrant farmworkers to enroll, un-enroll, and pay monthly health insurance bills. This is why Team Farmworker is stepping in to help with the surveys and helping to administer them. When we were at the training we went over the survey as a group and then we split and paired up with one of the native Spanish workers to do a test run and get a feel for what it will be like. Once we all finished we contemplated and decided for the farmworkers sake and ours that we should work as a pair with each other when we actually administer these surveys. All of us have some Spanish speaking background from previous classes we have taken but we are really rusty from not using it for so long. It is vital we are able to understand everything that the farmworkers respond to us saying, so having two of the team farmworkers doing this together will help from not hearing any information. Whether we have good or bad results it will be fascinating to listen and see how the ACA has affected them. Also, for the North Carolina Farmworkers project, this will be the first time that surveys are given, and that Team Farmworker will be the first group to conduct using the surveys. I am very excited to go out to the camps and meet and speak with more of the farmworkers and fill out these surveys and actually learn what their thoughts of the health insurance are.
