Migrant Farmworker Access To Health Care: Article Analysis

     Illegal immigrants usually hold jobs that have bad conditions and worse pay.  Oftentimes, these jobs are found in sectors such as agriculture, construction, food-handling and manufacturing (Dwyer).  Unfortunately for the illegal individuals who acquire these jobs, they have no access to comprehensive health care, though their line of work tends to demand it.  Although illegal immigrants are consequently strapped for cash, many of them will not visit primary care physicians for fear of being deported.  This sets up a vicious cycle: individuals get sick yet ignore the signs.  When illnesses get remarkably worse and are too severe to treat at doctors' offices, the individuals then go to emergency rooms, where the cost is considerably greater.  More often than not, the immigrants cannot afford to pay their hospital bills.  The cost is then covered by the medical institutions and tax-payer dollars (Wolf).  While some argue that illegal migrants do not

The absence of low income health care benefits was also a policy affecting the families in the documentary. The health care system has been a historically broken system. People often rely on their employers for affordable health care coverage and companies often don’t offer it, or as we witnessed in the documentary, they cut hours to part time because they don’t want to (or in some cases can’t afford to) shell out the money for employee health insurance. Most people who are working minimum wage jobs, especially part time minimum wage jobs, certainly cannot afford high individual or family health insurance premiums, and hence are not maintaining their health. People earning minimum wage are often living in poverty and there is a direct link between poverty and the uninsured.

Early in the panel, Barbara Vinograde talked about how easily a monthly payment for private insurance can cripple a low-income family – as payments can often be large fractions of someone’s budget. Worse yet, Betsy Momany describes an all-to-common situation where those who do have certain government insurances can’t utilize them because care providers won’t take them in due to the lack of profitability when helping them. This occurs in a productivity-based system, where physicians are paid by the insurance companies, which leads them to accepts those insurances that pay them the most per visit. Further effects of this lack of assistance and care are things like obesity and diabetes amongst low-income children. According to Dr. Eleanor Lisa Lavadie-Gomez, major food companies work hard to get children addicted to sugary food, and they profit off of the fact that the poor can only buy processed food because they can’t afford to spend money of fresh food that could go bad. Because these families don’t have better options, they experience negative health consequences, which then go untreated when these children aren’t provided proper

Christopher Columbus landed on the shores of America back 500 years ago in the year 1492. Were he and his crew the first illegal immigrants in America? The land was occupied by another group of people that didn’t grant these explorers the right to have whatever they please without acquiring some kind of legal status. The topic of legal status might have been irrelevant back in those days but it surely is an issue that is widely talked about in today’s America. The issue of illegal immigrants has been a hot topic especially when it comes to discussing whether these people should be allowed to have health care provided by a government that doesn’t recognize their

Financial barriers to access health care are common in a low-income family when they are uninsured or underinsured. Many uninsured and undocumented immigrant received federal and state health care coverage. Latinos and African American are the ethnicities that are disproportionally get affected. Limited access to a doctor when they are sick, taking non-prescribed medication and holding off recommended treatment is only some of the problems they encountered (Carrillo et al., 2011).

The film showed that some health care providers might mistreat patients because they do not have insurance. Also, they do not have the means to pay their expensive health care bill. The emergency room is the least effective in caring for undocumented immigrants and people in general. Much less, it does not provide an effective way in managing individual health care needs. The film also showed that undocumented immigrants may be afraid of reporting mistreatment from hospitals and employers because they are concerned about being deported.

Vulnerable populations is a term that creates an image of distinct and narrow-minded minority though the vulnerability of every individual to illness, disease, and injury has made health insurance necessary and probable for a huge portion of the American population. Vulnerable populations in the United States includes parents and children of immigrants, race/ethnic minorities, the disabled poor, the elderly, foster children, families ineligible for welfare, prison inmates and former offenders, children with special care needs, and residents of rural areas. However, the uninsured population has developed to become one of the vulnerable populations in the United States because of the risks and dangers associated with the lack of health insurance. As a result of the increased of the number of the uninsured, they have a huge financial impact on the vulnerable population.

In 1965 in Delano, California, there are many migrant farmers struggling to pick grapes at the end of their long shift. The poor farmers do not have any bathroom breaks during their long work hours. They barely have enough money to support their family after taking a pay cut from $1.40 to $1.25 per hour. There is no clean water as they all sweat profusely in the scorching heat of the California summers. The farm workers work as long as possible because they need the money.

But for the rest of the population substantial disparities still exist. This problem not only affects the uninsured population and the communities they live in, but the entire nation's economy. Dozens of hospitals in Texas, New Mexico Arizona, and California, have been forced to close or face bankruptcy because of federally mandated programs requiring hospitals to provide free emergency room services to illegal aliens. Safety net hospitals continue to operate under a heavy burden of providing care to this largely uninsured population (Torres, Steven, & Wallace, 2013). Having access to healthcare is a necessity in maintaining the good health of these undocumented immigrants. Several solutions have been proposed to overcome the barriers affecting undocumented immigrants. One solution would be to expand the coverage of the Affordable Health Care Act for this population. Another solution would be to approve an amnesty bill to alleviate the undocumented immigrants' situation in the United Sates, which would allow them to access public health

The Affordable Care is only available to documented immigrants and American citizens, but there are still other branches of healthcare that may be available to undocumented immigrants.

As the two biggest migrant countries in the world, United States and Canada do have some organizations to help migrant workers protect their rights. According to the CBC News, “Citizenship and Immigration Canada states that “Canadian laws protect every worker in Canada. This includes temporary foreign workers.”(cbc.ca) Government insist that those employers who “employing temporary foreign workers must ensure they are covered by provincial or private health insurance” (cbc.ca). The Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC) is a coalition of national migrant worker groups, grassroots organizations, unions, faith groups, activists and researchers that have come together to fight for justice and dignity for migrant workers. (migrantworkersalliance.org).

Healthcare in the contemporary United States emerges from a long and sordid history that began in the late 1800s when the fight for universal health care came on the heels of the formation of systems that ranged from rudimentary to comprehensive in various European countries including Germany, Norway, Britain, Russia, and the Netherlands (Palmer, 1999). Most of these programs were formed as “a means of maintaining incomes and buying political allegiance”, as conservative governments, primarily in Britain and Germany, worked to stem the flow of the burgeoning socialist and labor parties (Palmer, 1999). During this same time brought a greater transparency of the experiences of industry workers and the “nightmare” conditions they were enduring

I enjoyed reading your primary task posting concerning work related issues that migrant farm workers face in the United States. In fact, I completely agree with your statement that even though the United States agricultural industry heavily depends on the labor migrant farm workers provide, the men, women, and children performing the work are for the most part seriously underappreciated. Additionally, you made an extremely interesting point about migrant farm workers who are in the country legally, even though they are eligible for government assistance (WIC, Medicaid, and food stamps), who do not receive these benefits because they are frequently traveling from state to state to find work. I had not considered this element of

Well according to The Declaration of independence it states “We hold these truths so be self evident ,that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights “. Clearly in big bold letters it says that everyone is equal and should not be denied any rights so medical rights to immigrants shouldn't make a difference i mean i believe immigrants should be given medical rights it's only right and fair to everyone it's only human to do so .

It is vital for health professional to advocate for policies that will advance the access to health care, equality of services, and their ethical oath to do no harm. Yes, from an ethical stand point health professionals should advocate for minimum wage laws to apply to migrant farmworkers. The minimum wage laws in the US exists because many in society believes a company has a responsibility to ensure that their workers earn enough to live on. This belief means that works would be able to provide support their needs for food, clothing, shelter, and self-care (education and health). Structural violence looks at how social structures or institutions harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs.