Doctors for America’s “Coverage is Good Medicine” tour stopped in Orlando Saturday, for an enrollment fair and to help answer questions and get Floridians covered before the upcoming March 31 deadline.
With 24.5% Orange County residents under the age of 65 years uninsured, only 20 other counties in the entire nation have a higher number of people without insurance.
“Coverage is good medicine and we urge Floridians to check out the new affordable plans by going on-line, calling 211 or visiting a local office for in-person assistance to get insurance,” said Dr. Alice Chen, Executive Director for Doctors for America.
Chen said, she’s seeing people excited about getting health care as they have been without it for so long, but physicians are also seeing a lot of people who don’t know they can get help – that is, in-person help or financial help.
“The most important message is, people should call 211, make an appointment and get health insurance,” she said.
Nearly 6 in 10 people who do not have health insurance and are eligible for coverage through the new marketplaces, can find coverage for $100 or less per month.
About 300,000 Floridians have already purchased health insurance through the exchanges and of those, 88% have received financial assistance and 60% are paying less than $100 a month for health insurance, said Dr. Mona Manget, Chair of Doctors for America an Allergist-Immunologist based in St. Petersburg. To date, over three million Americans across the country have signed up for health care coverage.
“Millions of Americans now have health insurance that’s affordable and of a high quality,” she said. “And we are here today because we really want to reach out to communities across the state, as Florida is a bellweather state; what happens in Florida affects what happens in the rest of the country.”
“With 2.9 million Floridians uninsured, we need to work harder to get every person that’s left uninsured signed up and we only have 37 days left. It’s a huge challenge, but an incredible opportunity,” Manget added.
City of Orlando Commissioner Sam Ings, who joined the Doctors for America tour Saturday, praised the physicians for their important work and urged residents to take advantage of the group’s presence to get questions answered and enroll.
About 8 navigators were on hand at the Smith Community Center to assist Orange County residents in enrolling under the Affordable Care Act. However, it’s not clear how many persons actually signed up.
Other partners joining Doctors for America, a 5-year-old, sixteen thousand member group of doctors and medical students who believe ‘everyone has a right to health care’ included, Enroll America, Northside Love and Florida CHAIN.
The “Coverage is Good Medicine” health care enrollment tour kicked-off in Tampa on Saturday morning, then traveled to Orlando. The group will head to Jacksonville on March 1, and conclude with an enrollment fair in Tallahassee on March 5th on the FAMU campus.
