Medicaid cuts disproportionately affect America’s Hispanic/Latino populations.

Less than half of America’s Hispanic/Latino populations have private health insurance. In 2004, one third of Hispanic or Latino Americans lacked any health insurance compared to 10 percent of whites and 16 percent of blacks. Hispanic or Latino Americans are also twice as likely as whites to rely on Medicaid for health insurance benefits. Consequently America’s Hispanic/Latino populations are disproportionately impacted when benefits offered through Medicaid programs are eliminated, reduced or restricted.

According to the National Health Information Survey the proportion of the Hispanic population that reported having an unmet health care need in 2003 due to cost was nearly twenty percent higher than the proportion of the white population reporting the same problem.

Publicly funded health benefit programs are intended to provide a safety net for vulnerable and low-income populations that are either uninsured or under insured. Consequently it is these same vulnerable populations that are affected the most when access restrictions are imposed in order to contain public health spending growth.