HispanicBusiness

Members of Hispanic organizations from all over the country on Tuesday presented Latinos United for Healthcare, a platform to support the health care reform currently being debated in Congress and designed to inform Hispanics about changes in the system.

The National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, representing 29 organizations, and the League of United Latin American Citizens decided to create an organization to channel their efforts in favor of health care reform, which they said is at "the most critical time" in the debate in Congress.

"Congress will have no doubt what the stance of the Latino community is," said LULAC president Rosa Rosales in a telephone conference call.

Representatives of Latinos United for Healthcare will meet with members of Congress, Latino organizations and health care experts to ask for a reform that improves health insurance coverage, emphasizes disease prevention and eliminates inequalities.

This last objective requires, the campaign says, guaranteeing health coverage for all children with U.S. citizenship, independent of the immigration status of their parents.

In addition, they are asking for the elimination of the five-year waiting period for legal immigrants who want to receive Medicaid benefits, and for the abolishment of the verification requirements that can exclude U.S. citizens with low incomes from the system.

"We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix the health care system," said Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza.

Dr. Elena Rios, the president of the National Hispanic Medical Association, also emphasized the importance of prevention within a community that is developing more and more cases of diabetes and heart problems, illnesses that can be avoided with good nutrition starting in childhood.

She said health care reform should dedicate more funds to disseminating messages about prevention in the media, in the schools and at other places where families regularly go.

"Teaching them to live a healthy lifestyle is the best way to reduce costs," Rios said.

To increase the dissemination of these messages, the LUH leaders have created a Web page that includes new technologies, like Facebook and Twitter, and the chance for Hispanic users to tell their stories or write their congressmen.

In addition, the Web page includes a section called Truths and Myths, which is designed to clear up some of the "fallacies" that have circulated about the reform.

Among them, the Web page denies that the reform will abolish workplace health insurance and replace it with other government insurance, that it will affect Medicare, that it will insure illegal immigrants for free and that the cost of the reform will bankrupt the country.

"The quantity of misinformation that's out there is spectacular," said NHLA president Lillian Rodriguez Lopez at the conference.

She said many Latinos have been frightened that they could lose their insurance, or that they will not be able to choose which type they want. It has even been said by some opponents of reform that there will government courts or panels that will decide who will receive life-saving health care treatment and who will not.

"It's time for the community to get the information it needs," she added.