In Fair Haven, Healthcare Expanders Dare To Dream

Juliana Garcia can still remember being nine years old, uninsured, and telling her mom that it really was ok for her to pass on a dental surgery that would cost more than $4,000.

That the healthcare operation could wait. That that money needed to be spent instead on rent and food and other essentials.

Garcia, now 19 years old and a student at Central Connecticut State University, shared that memory Tuesday morning as one of nearly a dozen panelists to participate in a healthcare access-focused discussion at Fair Haven Community Health Care at 374 Grand Ave.

She spoke up as a ​“Dreamer” — as an immigrant who came to this country with her parents from Honduras when she was just a kid — and as an advocate for greater awareness and protections for undocumented Connecticut residents like herself through her work with CT Students 4 a Dream.

“To what extent can I dream?” she asked the group of elected officials and lawyers and immigrant rights advocates and doctors before her. ​“To what extent can I feel I’m in charge of my own life?”

The event was organized by state Attorney General William Tong and state Comptroller Sean Scanlon. Its goal was to bring together local and state elected officials, healthcare providers, and others to talk about the importance of clearing remaining barriers separating Connecticut residents — in particular undocumented immigrants — from being able to access quality affordable healthcare. 

In addition to Tong and Scanlon, participants in Tuesday’s confab included Garcia, Mayor Justin Elicker, New Haven State Sen. and President Pro Tem Martin Looney, Middletown State Sen. Matt Lesser, New Haven State Rep. Pat Dillon, National Immigrant Law Center President Kica Matos, Fair Haven Community Health Care President Suzanne Lagarde, Luis Luna of Husky 4 Immigrants, Cheila Serrano of Junta for Progressive Action, Wesleyan Assistant Professor of Psychology Andrea Negrete, and Sister Mary Ellen Burns of Apostle Immigrant Services, among others.

The event comes on the heels of the state legislature signing off earlier this year on expanding eligibility for the state’s HUSKY Medicaid insurance program to undocumented immigrants aged 15 and younger, an increase from the previous age cap of 12. It also took place as a federal court in Texas gets ready to hand down another decision on whether or not the Obama-era program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, can remain in place.

“I believe firmly in my heart that healthcare is a human right,” Scanlon said towards the top of Tuesday’s talk. ​“That is not the predominant view in this country.”

Sister Burns agreed. ​“When you don’t have healthcare, what is that doing, not just to you, but to the people who rely on your work? The people who rely on your income?” she asked. ​“Our whole system is fragile because we don’t have universal healthcare.”

Over the course of the hour-and-a-half-long conversation, panelists made their pitches for what Connecticut should and must do to ensure that its residents can access the healthcare they need.

Matos urged the elected officials present to push for Connecticut to adopt the ​“California standard” of offering ​“comprehensive healthcare to everyone regardless of age” and immigration status. Lesser said that he and his fellow state legislators should consider expanding DACA-level services for the ​“lookalike population” — that is, for people who would be eligible for DACA based on how old they are and when they immigrated to this country, but who cannot apply simply because the pending federal court case has put a pause on all new applications. Burns called on the state to expand its ​“emergency medical coverage” under the state Medicaid program to include dialysis and other intensive and life-saving treatments. Luna called for finding a way to bring onboard more state House representatives up for supporting increasing HUSKY’s age cap for undocumented immigrants from 15 to 26.

But no speaker held the group’s attention on Tuesday quite in the way that Garcia did, as she bolstered her call for expanded healthcare access with a mix of personal experience and moral urgency.

Garcia said that her family immigrated from Honduras to Hartford in 2013, when she was 8 years old. ​“I suffered gravely with asthma,” she said. ​“Thankfully, at that time, I had HUSKY.” She was able to have surgery covered largely by her government-supplied health insurance.

But she only had that coverage for eight months, she said. She said she had been ​“Scheduled to get some teeth work done.” Now that she was uninsured, ​“that couldn’t happen. Before that surgery ever got done, HUSKY was taken away.

“I was still 9 years old. I told my mom, ​‘We’re not paying $4,600,’ ” for that dental operation, she remembered. ​“We needed that money for rent.” For food. For clothing.

Garcia said that she and her 22-year-old brother still don’t have health insurance. Her younger sister, who was born in this country, does. Her family goes to the Charter Oak Health Center in Hartford and are able to get most of the healthcare they need there. But still, every time she or one of her parents get sick, they have to ask themselves: How serious is it? Can they afford to seek out care?

“My parents, if you’re sick, you’re going to the hospital,” Garcia said their prioritizing seeking out care for their kids. But for themselves, she said, they say, ​“Let’s see if it goes away.” 

Garcia also said one of the biggest healthcare-access hurdles she sees among the state’s undocumented population is a lack of awareness of just what resources are already available for them. She said her mom was recently diagnosed with diabetes, and neither her mom nor the providers at her health center knew that she was eligible for insulin at a lower cost, even though she didn’t have insurance. Garcia said she had to help her mom fight for that discount she was already eligible to receive.

Oftentimes, she told the group, ” you don’t know what the extent of the resources” are. ​“If you’re not advocating, getting the word out, you don’t know. … A lot of us don’t know these resources are available.”

Garcia said the work of CT Students for a Dream is to ​“help put a picture of the real struggle going on in our community” for legislators and lawyers and others to understand as they work up at the state Capitol.

Before closing out Tuesday’s event, Tong — who told the group, ​“I woke up this morning the son of someone who was formerly undocumented and I’ll go to be the same way” — tried to answer Garcia’s question from earlier in the talk about to what extent can she dream.

“You have to dream,” Tong said. ​“For your brother, your sister, your parents, and people like you.”