{"id":122689,"date":"2020-07-14T14:43:04","date_gmt":"2020-07-15T00:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=122689"},"modified":"2020-12-24T14:04:04","modified_gmt":"2020-12-25T00:04:04","slug":"hawaii-micronesian-migrants-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2020\/07\/14\/hawaii-micronesian-migrants-health-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawai\u02bbi\u2019s Micronesian migrants get limited access to health care"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> < 1<\/span> minute<\/span><\/span>
\"three
From left, Tim Halliday, Teresa Molina, Randall Akee<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Update December 24, 2020:<\/strong> This research is featured in a new Politico<\/em> article, “Irradiated, Cheated and Now Infected: America\u2019s Marshall Islanders Confront a COVID-19 Disaster<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Original story:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Micronesian migrants in Hawaiʻi<\/span> constitute a vulnerable ethnic population with limited access to health care, which lowers their medical utilization and raises their mortality rates.<\/p>\n

Those are the findings of a research study by Tim Halliday<\/strong> and Teresa Molina<\/strong>, economics<\/a> faculty in the College of Social Sciences<\/a> at the University of Hawaiʻi<\/span> at M\u0101noa, and Randall Akee, an associate professor in the Department of Public Policy and American Indian Studies at UCLA<\/abbr>.<\/p>\n

The paper, “The Mortality Effects of Reduced Medicaid Coverage Among International Migrants in Hawaii: 2012–2018<\/a>,” was recently published in the American Journal of Public Health<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Medicaid is a federal and state program that helps with medical costs for people with limited income and resources.<\/p>\n

In 2015, the State of Hawaiʻi<\/span> transitioned migrants governed by the Compact of Free Association (COFA<\/abbr>) treaties—the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republics of the Marshall Islands and Palau—from its Medicaid program to a new system in which they were eligible for subsidies to purchase private insurance on Affordable Care Act exchanges.<\/p>\n

After this change, Medicaid-funded hospitalizations of COFA<\/abbr> migrants declined by 31 percent and emergency room visits dropped by 19 percent.<\/p>\n

“Importantly, the decline in utilization affected the health of COFA<\/abbr> migrants,” said Halliday. “Mortality rates were over 40 percent higher in 2018 than in the period prior to 2015, when COFA<\/abbr> migrants were eligible for Medicaid.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since 2015, Medicaid-funded hospitalizations and emergency room visits have declined for Micronesian migrants in Hawaiʻi<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[301,197,1363,1026,9],"class_list":["post-122689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-college-of-social-sciences","tag-economics","tag-manoa-research","tag-social-science","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122689"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133187,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122689\/revisions\/133187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}