Health Care of Migrant Farmers

http://insurancenewsnet.com/article.asp?n=1&neID=200902031680.2_cd2a006ebdc6cf59

 

One of the great news mentioned in this article is the fact that Kaiser Permanante has pledged $2 million to support David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. This funding will be used to expand the Hispanic International Medical Graduate program. Ultimately it will increase the number of Hispanic physicians in California. As discussed in class, this will get rid of many social and cultural barriers between patients, specifically migrant farmers, and doctors. Because migrant farmers are a minority and poor, they would generally be intimidated by doctors to whom they cannot relate. By having more Hispanic doctors in California, these farmers can now turn to their physicians who would probably be bilingual in English and Spanish. By getting rid of communication barriers, many fears and misunderstanding at clinics will be eliminated.

As a result, preventative health care will be practiced instead of the patients seeking only emergency care. Thus, the general expense in medicine will decrease tremendously because health issues will be treated and prevented as much as possible before it is too late to do so in an emergency room which would lead to surgical procedures most of the time. However, there are still monetary issues to go see a doctor due to lack of insurance and transportation. This issue can be approached politically in that laws can be passed to enforce farm companies and owners to provide health insurance for farmers even if they do not have insurance or social security number. Although this approach may seem like a long shot, there must be public awareness of the importance of farmers in agricultural economy and the country’s economy in general in order to goad political leaders to push this law.