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DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 2014
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VOLUME 93 - NUMBER 1
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Despite Website Improvements, Millions of Blacks Not Covered
By Freddie Allen
NNPA Washington
Correspondent
WASHINGTON (NNPA)-As
the Obama administration makes
strides to improve the function
ality ofHealthCare.gov, the flag-
ship website for the Affordable
Care Act, Republican lawmakers
continue to block federal funds
that would help millions of poor
blacks get health insurance cov
erage.
A progress report on the im
proved performance of Health-
Care.gov cited hundreds of soft
ware bugs that generate errors
and hardware and infrastructure
ill-equipped to handle any sig
nificant volume to site.
“For some weeks in the
month of October, the site was
down an estimated 60 percent
of the time,” stated the progress
report.
Two months later, after insid
ers revealed that the site crashed
on a test run with just a few hun
dred concurrent users, HHS of
ficials said the site is more stable
and can handle 50,000 users at a
time.
Anton Gunn, director of Ex
ternal Affairs in the Office of
Intergovernmental and External
Affairs (IEA) at the U.S. De
partment of Health and Human
Services, said that in the first two
months, 1.2 million Americans
selected marketplace health in
surance plans or they received
a determination that they were
eligible for Medicaid or the chil
dren’s health insurance program.
Another 1.9 million people have
completed the application pro
cess through healthcare.gov and
are still in the process of shop
ping for a plan.
“The bottom line is that
healthcare.gov, beginning De
cember 1, is night and day from
where it was on October 1,”
Gunn said.
Recently, HHS announced
that ex-Microsoft executive
Kurt DelBene would replace
Jeff Zients as the leader of the
HealthCare.gov project. Accord
ing to a statement released by
the Health Department, DelBene
will oversee field operations for
HealthCare.gov and provide ad
vice on additional enrollment
channels, marketing and com
munications.
Applicants who want to en
roll in Marketplace coverage that
begins on January 1 should have
completed the application and
selected a plan by December 23
and pay the premium by Decem
ber 31 or the date chosen by the
insurer. Open enrollment closes
on March 31.
Despite the website upgrades
that include a feature that al
lows visitors to window shop for
health care plans without creat
ing an account, one of the big
gest threats to the success of the
Affordable Care Act is Republi
can obstruction at the state level.
According to a recent report
released by the Department of
Health and Human Services, if
all states expanded Medicaid
coverage, 95 percent of blacks
who don’t have health, insurance
might qualify for Medicaid, the
Children’s Health Insurance
Program (CHIP), or tax credits
that would decrease the burden
of paying premiums out-of-
pocket. Blacks account for 16
percent of Americans that fit into
the eligible uninsured category
and “more than 2.2 million Af
rican American adults live in
states that are not expanding
Medicaid,” stated the report.
Blacks often go without
health insurance coverage at
higher rates than their white
counterparts.
According to a report by the
Kaiser Family Foundation, 25
(Continued On Page 15)
First Lady Michelle Obama collects toys from military children during a Toys for Tots event at the Joint Base
Anacostia-Bolling Distribution Center in Washington, D.C., Dec. 19. (Official White House Photo by Chuck
A Better Deal for Kids in the Budget?
Democrats and Republicans Say Yes’
By Ann Challet
Special to the NNPA from
New America Media
June Jimenez of Silver Spring, Md. was pregnant when she was laid off from her job at a public affairs firm last
year. She tried unsuccessfully for months to find a job and worried about losing her home.
“My mortgage is $1,500 a month and 1 only received $320 a week in unemployment,” she says.
Her health insurance policy at the time didn’t provide her with maternity coverage, and when she tried to pur
chase an individual plan, she discovered that she couldn’t because her pregnancy qualified as a pre-existing condi
tion. She qualified for Medicaid, which covered the cost of her pregnancy, including an emergency C-section.
But she found herself facing the possibility of having to choose among making her mortgage payments, paying
for utilities, and buying food.
What sustained her, she says, was that by her sixth month of pregnancy she was able in enroll in WIC (the Spe
cial Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children). She used WIC to buy food for her and her
daughter for the next nine months.
Today Jimenez is working again, and her daughter Karanda is now almost a year old. “Without a doubt, Medicaid
and WIC saved us,” she says.’’Those programs] provided a crucial bridge for me.”
At a congressional briefing recently, children’s advocacy organization First Focus Campaign for Children, in con
junction with advocacy group MomsRising, presented the results of a nationwide poll that found bipartisan public
support for protecting funding for children’s programs in the federal budget.
The survey of 800 voters, commissioned by First Focus and conducted by polling firm American Viewpoint,
found that strong majorities of both Democrats and Republicans opposed cuts to programs like the ones that sus
tained Jimenez.
Voters were surveyed by landline and cell phone in the first week of
December.
“Kids were affected significantly by the budget sequestration that took effect earlier this year,” says Ed Walz, vice
president of communications at First Focus. Cutbacks, he says, have disproportionately impacted programs serving
children.
While some federal programs such as Social Security are mandatory, children’s programs like WIC, Head Start
(which provides early childhood services to low-income families, including education and child care), and K-12
education are funded through the appropriations process.
Head Start programs, for example, had to cut services for close to 60,000 children in the 2013-2014 school year.
According to the survey, three in four voters oppose cuts to K-12 education funding, including 87 percent of
Democrats, 63 percent of Republicans, and 71 percent of independent voters.
Voters specifically oppose cuts to early learning for young children by a ratio of nearly two-to- one (62 to 32
percent), including half of Republicans, more than three in four Democrats, and almost 60 percent of independents.
Nearly two in three voters oppose cuts to Head Start.
Sheila Arias of Durham, N.C. says that when she lost her job as an interpreter, she couldn’t afford to keep her
daughter, Jaslene, who was two at the time, in daycare. Arias went to the local Children’s Developmental Services
Agency for help, and was told that Jaslene would probably qualify for Early Head Start.
The agency helped Arias apply, and three weeks later, her daughter was accepted into the program. Jaslene has
developmental disabilities, and Arias says that the teachers “offered her important structure and a regular daily rou
tine” that, in addition to therapy, have helped with managing her special needs.
Jaslene will start kindergarten next year, and Arias says that Early Head Start is now helping her with her younger
child, who is showing signs of a disorder that also affects his sister.
Democrats and Republicans recently reached a budget deal that would restore some of the funding to programs
that were affected by sequestration. First Focus reports that if sequestration relief were to be applied proportionally
to children’s programs, about $3.6 billion federal dollars would be restored to these initiatives in 2014, including
$1.8 billion for K-12 education and $370 million for Head Start.
The poll found that when voters are asked to prioritize deficit reduction or protecting investments in children,
31 percent of respondents place a higher priority on investments in children and 41 percent rate the two options as
equally important. “Voters reject what they consider a false choice,” says Walz. “What this shows is that 72 percent
of voters reject that the way to reduce the budget deficit is to cut children’s programs.”
(Continued On Page 15)
Mandela’s
statue, at 24
feet, towers
above others
By George E. Curry
NNPA Editor-in-Chief
PRETORIA, South Africa
(NNPA) - Nearly a month after
his death, there is a bitter strug
gle to define - and, in many in
stances, re-define - the legacy of
Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s
first democratically elected pres
ident.
“here is an attempt to do in his
death what they could not do in
life - take away his story,” Jesse
Jackson said in a speech at the
Nelson Mandela Foundation in
Johannesburg. “He did not go to
jail as some out-of-control youth
who needed to be matured. He
went in as a freedom fighter and .
came out as a freedom fighter.”
The effort to soften the image
of Mandela as a freedom fighter
began long before his death.
Speaking at an African Na
tional Congress (ANC) celebra
tion a year before Mandela’s
death, South African President
Jacob Zuma said, “Inside our
country*, *even those who were
are who are still, fundamentally
opposed to the ANC, and who
fought tooth and nail to keep
South Africa a racist pariah state,
now claim Nelson Mandela as
their own.”
In in trying reclaim Mandela
as their own, many whites are
trying to sanitize him image,
Jackson argues.
Part of that effort begins with
attributing many of Mandela’s
outstanding qualities to his 27
years in prison. For example,
television commentators in the
U.S. and in Africa say Mandela
learned to love his enemies in
jail and cite his forgiveness of
his former jailers as evidence to
support that assertion.
However, Mandela’s autobi
ography, “Long Walk to Free
dom,” traces that lesson back to
his youth.
“On this first day of classes
I was clad in my new boots. I
had never worn boots before
of any kind, and that first day, I
walked like a newly shod horse.
I made a terrible racket walking
up the steps and almost slipped
several times. As I clomped into
the classroom, my boots crash
ing on that shiny wooden floor,
I noticed two female students in
the first row were watching my
lame performance with great
amusement. The prettier of the
two leaned over to her friend and
said loud enough for all to hear:
“The country boy is not used to
wearing shoes,” at which her
friend laughed. I was blind with
fury and embarrassment.
“Her name was Mathona and
she was a bit of a smart aleck.
That day I vowed never to talk
to her. But as my mortification
wore off (and I became more ad
ept at walking with boots) I also
got to know her, and she was to
become my greatest friend at
Clarkebury,” a Wesleyan mis
sionary school Mandela began
attending at the age of 16. '
In his autobiography, Mande
la gave another example of not
humiliating his opponents.
“I learned my lesson one day
from an unruly donkey,” he re-
counted. “We had been taking
turns climbing up and down its
back and when my chance came
I jumped on and the donkey
bolted into a nearby thornbush.
It bent its head, trying to unseat
me, which it did, but not be
fore the thorns had pricked and
scratched my face, embarrassing
me in front of my friends. Like
(Continued On Page 15)