Annotations for Communities: Veterans

This is news from Latino USA. I'm Vidal Guzmán.

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The growth in Spanish-language media is one indication, and now it's official. The Census Bureau reports that next to English, Spanish is now the most-used language in the nation. Seventeen million people in thirty-nine states speak Spanish daily. This 1990 census data says that one out of seven Americans speak a language other than English. This nation's outgoing and Spanish-speaking Surgeon General, Dr. Antonia Novello, recently added to the controversy regarding President Clinton's healthcare plan.

Los virus no identifican persona por pasaporte ni por tarjetita. En ese sentido, hay que de quitarle el temor a buscar salud…

Novello stated that it should include coverage for undocumented workers for public health reasons and added that viruses and bacteria did not ask for green cards. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, head of the Health Care Task Force, says that the healthcare plan would not provide courage for the undocumented. That topic and other healthcare issues of interest to the Hispanic community were on the table when Mrs. Clinton recently met with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. From Washington, Patricia Guadalupe reports.

Mrs. Clinton came to Capitol Hill promising greater minority-group participation in changing the healthcare system. An issue of particular worry to Congressman José Serrano, Democrat of New York and chairman of the caucus, is the lack of sufficient medical data on Hispanics.

One of the things I mentioned to her, for instance, was that tuberculosis in New York City's Hispanic community was always a problem but now has become a national problem when it reached out. So we need research to know what unique medical needs exist.

Puerto Rico's resident commissioner, Carlos Romero-Barceló, told Mrs. Clinton that residents of Puerto Rico don't enjoy full-healthcare rights as other U.S. citizens.

We have the absurd situation that here we have citizens who are not covered by Medicaid and even veterans in Puerto Rico not covered by Medicaid.

According to the National Council of La Raza, one-third of all Hispanics have no medical coverage. Members of the Hispanic Caucus want the Clinton administration to extend universal healthcare to the uninsured and undocumented workers, over half of whom are Hispanic. For Latino USA, I'm Patricia Guadalupe.