U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services visits FIU to discuss affordable health care


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President Mark B. Rosenberg meets with U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell to discuss Miami-Dade’s unique needs and income disparities that prevent many families from obtaining health coverage.

On Monday, Nov. 17, United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell visited FIU to discuss national and local efforts to get people signed up for health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Burwell was joined by panel moderator Nicholas Duran, Florida State Director for Enroll America and panelists Karen Egozi, CEO, Epilepsy Foundation; Annie Neasman, CEO, Jessie Trice Community Health Center; and Marisel Losa, CEO, Health Council of South Florida. Together, the presenters discussed the unique challenges Miami-Dade county residents face and how they are working to overcome barriers to coverage.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, approximately 3.8 million, or 25 percent of Florida’s population, is uninsured. Secretary Burwell said, “Florida led the nation of those who enrolled in the marketplace last year.” In this second round of open enrollment, she said 10 percent of calls they have received thus far are Spanish speakers, highlighting the need to further educate and engage with Hispanic and Latino communities. In addition to getting people to reenroll, the Secretary and her staff are also working to increase platforms, like mobile, where minorities are most likely to sign up.

“The Latino community actually has a deeper use than the average community in the U.S. with mobile,” Burwell said. The Health and Human Services team has sought to make both the website and application “simpler, more intuitive and faster. We’ve also expanded number of customer service folks who speak Spanish.”

In addition, Burwell noted that they conducted five weeks of testing with insurers prior to launching the site, as compared to just 10 days last year.

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L-R: Annie Neasman, CEO, Jessie Trice Community Health Center; Marisel Losa, CEO, Health Council of South Florida; United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell; Karen Egozi, CEO, Epilepsy Foundation; Nicholas Duran, Florida State Director for Enroll America.

Karen Egozi talked about the importance of communicating with people in their native language to ensure comprehension of details related to insurance.

“We’ve always made sure our staff was culturally diverse and multilingual,” Egozi said. “We have people who speak all languages, Creole, Portuguese [and] we’re geared up to provide people with information in the language of their choice. Actually being able to translate technical things like insurance is an art in and of itself.”

Annie Neasman notes that of the 13,000 individuals who used the Jessie Trice Community Health Center last year, two-thirds were uninsured. The Health Center uses nontraditional practices to reach its audience in hopes to educate them about insurance options.

“We did a lot of great things last year when we enrolled about 8,000 individuals,” Neasman said. “We have to go where our communities are. We have a person going to hospitals at least one day a week. We use faith-based organizations – that’s a huge part of how we got those eligible individuals signed up. Barbers shops, beauty shops – wherever we could find those individuals that’s where we went. We will be doing that again.”

Marisel Losa spoke about a new tool available to consumers: 2-1-1, Switchboard Miami. Dialing 2-1-1 will now connect consumers to trained facilitators who can answer questions about health insurance over the phone and schedule an in-person appointment for further help.

FIU will be hosting six enrollment events throughout the course of open enrollment. To view a list of upcoming events, click here.