By Megan Burks
Can California Doctors Handle Surge in Medi-Cal Enrollment?
State lawmakers gave an initial OK Thursday to expanding Medi-Cal under the Affordable Care Act. The expansion would extend Medi-Cal coverage to more than a million Californians next year, with initial costs being covered by the federal government.
But doctors say they’re already struggling to serve Medi-Cal’s existing caseload.
Emily Bazar, reporter for the CHCF Center for Health Reporting, says some providers won’t accept anymore Medi-Cal patients. The reason is financial – California has the 47th lowest Medicaid reimbursement rate. As a result, just more than 50 percent of California doctors accept Medi-Cal.
Follow Emily Bazar @emilybazar.
‘We’re Not All Latinos’: Face of the Undocumented
KPBS’s Hey Neighbor! blog introduced us to Marcela Zhou this week. She’s undocumented and benefitting from the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which grants a two-year deportation reprieve and work permit to youth who were brought to the United States illegally at a young age.
Zhou is of Chinese descent and was raised in Mexicali. She said she wanted to speak out about her status to show how varied the undocumented experience can be.
“I am not an activist. I don’t want to get involved, but I have decided to come forward and share my story so that others can put a face to the undocumented and discard the assumption that we are all Latinos. Yes, I am Mexican, but I’m also Chinese. I am educated, and I speak Spanish, Chinese and also English with an accent that is barely detectable. For me, San Diego is home.”
Follow @KPBSEngage for updates from Hey Neightbor!
Despite High Latino Enrollment, Interest in Chicano Studies Declines
Fronteras Desk reports enrollment in San Diego State’s Chicano Studies program is at an all-time low despite Latino enrollment at the university surging. The reason could be because young Latinos no longer identify as Chicano, a term that grew out of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
| “But maybe that term,” – Chicano – “is not what’s appropriate for unifying a mobilization of young people in 2013,” said Jorge Mariscal, a professor of Chicano arts and humanities at UC San Diego.
He said understanding the community’s demographic evolution is key. The Latinos on university campuses today are the children of the large wave of immigrants who came to the U.S. in the 1980s and 90s, well after the Chicano movement’s heyday. “It means that many of these young people don’t know what the term Chicano means in the U.S. context,” Mariscal said. “So it’s really the demographic change, and the culture that those new young people bring, that is slowly moving off center stage the term Chicano, and therefore Chicano Studies.” Unlike the Chicano generation, which saw itself outside the mainstream and was clearly a minority, today’s young Mexican-Americans increasingly are the mainstream. Many are voting, participating in the political system from within. The four-decade-old Chicano movement is increasingly a vague memory, the term imbued with nebulous meaning. |
Follow Fronteras Desk @fronterasdesk.
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