Bush administration has not released '03 data on farmworkers
By MICHAEL DOYLE BEE WASHINGTON BUREAU Last Updated: November 24, 2006, 03:52:48 AM PST Source: Modesto Bee
WASHINGTON — Migrant farmworkers face life-and-death questions about health care.
So far, though, the Bush administration is keeping potential answers to itself.
Four years ago, Congress ordered a study of farmworker health care. Three years ago, the study was done. It's been buried since, caught in a bureaucracy working at its own pace.
"We have been kind of frustrated," said Wenceslao Vasquez, a California health activist who is chairman of the Bush administration's National Advisory Council on Migrant Health. "If we had the study, we would have the basis for pointing out our concerns."
Three out of four of the nation's estimated 3 million migrant and seasonal farmworkers earn less than $10,000 a year. Few are insured. By some estimates, about 5 percent are covered by employer-provided health insurance.
And their work is dangerous. Thirteen percent of U.S. occupational deaths during the 1990s occurred in farming, although farmworkers made up 2 percent of the work force.
Congress picked up on the problem in 2002 when it passed a package of health care amendments. The legislation included a requirement that the Department of Health and Human Services conduct a solutions-oriented study of farmworker health care.
Examine health care barriers
Congress directed the Bush administration to consult widely and answer specific questions. The study was to examine the barriers to farmworkers' enrolling in government programs. Obstacles might include language, complicated applications or a lack of outreach workers. It was to analyze the lack of "portability," which is when farmworkers obtain health care in one state but not another. It was to evaluate solutions, including interstate compacts, publicprivate partnerships and a new national program serving migrants.
"The study is very important," Vasquez said.
It is also very, very late.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services completed the study in 2003. Since then, researcher William Clark informed the migrant advisory council in January, the study has remained "in clearance." This bureaucratic limbo means the study can't be made public.
In the spring, the advisory council urged Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt to release the study.
"(We) are working very diligently to accelerate the review of the farmworker access study," Leavitt said on May 31.
Nearly six months later, the study remains in clearance. Health and Human Services officials could not be reached for comment on when that will end.
"They say it's coming soon," Vasquez said Wednesday, "but we never know."
Bee Washington Bureau reporter Michael Doyle can be reached at 202-383-0006, or
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