Advocates for Oregon’s Pacific Islander community feel confident that a hard-fought special health insurance program for low-income islanders can continue after they learned Tuesday that 78 percent of the money needed can be rolled over from the current budget.
“It’s looking good for funding for next session,” said Shane Jackson, a lobbyist working with the COFA Alliance National Network.
State actuaries had estimated as many as 1,000 natives of the island nations of the Compact of Free Association, or COFA, would sign up for the premium assistance program, but estimates now speculate that only 350 people will be eligible for the program. As of Jan. 18, the state had approved 188 previously uninsured individuals for the program, with another 158 applications pending.
Last year, the state budgeted $1.8 million for the program, but the state has spent only $400,000 of that money. Gov. Kate Brown’s proposed budget calls for replacing that $400,000 with new revenue, but even without those dollars, the state may have enough funding to keep the program going.
By comparison, a push to cover the state’s 15,000 to 18,000 remaining immigrant children who are uninsured is projected to cost $55 million.
Rep. Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis, told The Lund Report that he has a difficult task ahead making brutal cuts to the Department of Human Services and the Oregon Health Authority without new revenue, but said he wanted to look out for the COFA residents.
“I’m optimistic we’ll have the money to take care of them, but in this world, not much is certain,” said Rayfield, who co-sponsored the legislation last year approving the program.
The Pacific Islanders served by the COFA premium assistance program live below or near the poverty line, but are ineligible for the Oregon Health Plan due to their residency status. Natives of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau are free to live in the United States according to a treaty signed after the former colonies won their independence, but are not technically immigrants.
While they were colonies, some of the islands were used as bombing ranges by the U.S. Military, leaving behind atolls such as Bikini Island so polluted with nuclear fallout that they are unfit for human habitation.
The Clinton-era welfare reform law stripped them from receiving Medicaid, leaving thousands of the former islanders living in the United States without access to healthcare.
The state COFA Premium Assistance Program allows these individuals instead to select a private health insurance plan off the online marketplace, and the state pays the full cost of their premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, for which members receive a debit card.
They have their choice of any of the same six health insurers as other consumers have on healthcare.gov.
The federal government pays 90 percent of the funding directly to the health insurers, with 10 percent coming from the state general fund, according to Loyd Henion, a COFA Alliance board member.
Chris can be reached at [email protected].
