Center in the News
The UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute conducted a study that shows healthcare disparities linked to telehealth use during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from race, age, language, and technology access barriers.
A study by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found that since COVID-19 emerged, language barriers have prevented Latino and Asian patients in Los Angeles from making full use of telehealth services.
Arturo Vargas Bustamante, a senior fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Center for Health Policy Research, said ensuring undocumented women have access to telehealth services and are able to obtain abortion pills at a low cost could be a solution. But he said health organizations will need to work hard to win the trust of these women, who might fear their information will land in the hands of law enforcement and be used to deport them. "We need to use trusting voices in the community to make undocumented women trust that potential of telehealth services," said Vargas Bustamante
In addition to the current law, all immigrants without papers who meet the financial criteria can obtain a limited coverage of Medi-Cal, which includes emergency and embarrassment services and, in some cases, long-term attention. “It’s a key moment, when fours are incorporating all these undocumented immigrants who have advanced to the medical attention system,” said Arturo Vargas Bustamante, professor of politics and health management at the School of Public Health at Fielding. If you have extended your chronic, dice attachments, they will simply end up in the emergency room and will be more
Even without the cuts to COVID spending by the government, it is important to determine what policy responses are needed federally and in California to address the health inequities Latinos and other people of color face, all of which were made worse by the pandemic. We need to prevent these injustices from reoccurring should there be a new COVID-19 surge, or in the inevitable case of a new pandemic.
“This is a great achievement and it is absolutely amazing, but there will still be some who will remain uninsured,” said Arturo Vargas Bustamante, health policy professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “It’s not universal health care, but the situation for many immigrants in California will be much better.”
In 2023, after Medi-Cal expands to cover undocumented immigrants 50 and older, about 3.2 million people will remain uninsured in California, according to researchers at the UC Berkeley Labor Center and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Of those, 1.16 million will