Healthcare Reform

Reading about the struggle for immigrants to receive healthcare is pretty disheartening. You imagine an individual or a family who goes through all the work of getting to the United States, establishing themselves with a job and a halfway decent place to live, and then working their hardest to contribute to society, but at the end of the day, they can’t get healthcare coverage either because of their status or the fact that they work jobs in a sector that provides little to no coverage. The chart from the National Immigration Law Center shows how willing we are to accept and help individuals such as those seeking asylum to sustain a heathy living with coverage and government aid from organizations such as SNAP and medicaid, but the question …show more content…
For a great deal of immigrants in the United Sates, the concept of healthcare and seeing any type of doctor can become increasingly difficult because of simple social and cultural aspects such there being a language barrier between the doctor and the patient, “if patients know they will have difficulty explaining their medical needs or problems to a doctor or nurse, they are less willing to seek care” (MPI). This was something in the reading that immediately caught my attention because it’s not an issue that ever crossed my mind because of how simple it seemed. The basic practice here in the United States for a native born citizen with basic means is that you go to the doctor when you feel sick, this often doesn’t relate to the severity. For many immigrants, there’s a cultural notion that methods such as home remedies can help certain illnesses, this notion even holds back those who are legally eligible to receive government …show more content…
In the videos we watched in class about the healthcare center in Mamaroneck schools, we saw a divide between working class whites and working class immigrants. One group who was in favor of the in school hospital like peter and one group completely against. One view point that really stuck to me was the woman who spoke and said that she also has a demanding job and that when her kids need to go to the hospital for whatever reason, she takes off work and brings them. While she is not wrong for her position, I find that too many people are not aware of the fact that while theses immigrant individuals may have jobs, they aren’t working in the types of fiends where there is liberty for them to take off time for necessities like taking a child to see a doctor. It feels like the current laws we have in place make native citizens feel as if they are being stolen from when immigrants device benefits or any type of aid that helps them to better their situation, there’s a significant lack of the undressing that the playing field isn’t leveled in these situations. Once we can move to a point where that is understood, advocacy at local levels could lead to tremendous success in affecting local and state