An organization by the name Young Invincibles teamed up with the Adult Education Department at Cerritos College to provide health care insurance information to students as well as community members.
The information was presented at a workshop on Saturday from 10:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. in the Health Science Building, room 102.
Maria Beltran, California outreach coordinator for Young Invincibles, was in charge of the event and planned along with the Adult Education Department.
Beltran spoke at a spanish version of the workshop earlier Saturday morning from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.
Young Invincibles has launched a campaign called Healthy Young America, where presentations take place all across the country.
Two members, Tamika Butler and Michael Oyewole, took turns presenting information through an english version power point presentation.
Beltran feels that both workshops had good turnouts.
“People were really engaged and had great questions.”
Some of the information was geared specifically toward young adults. This fits in with Young Invincilbles’ mission of educating the young community.
The presentation stated that about 18.1 percent of California residents lack health insurance, and 17.4 percent of all U.S. residents lack health insurance.
Audience members were encouraged to go to coveredca.com to see if they qualify for health insurance.
Earth science major, Jeff Anderson felt as if the information was about “60/40” meaning he felt 60 percent was advocacy and 40 percent was informational.
When going to coveredca.com users will have to enter personal information into a calculator, such as how much money they make, where they are from and their social security number among other things.
Anderson felt that security would be an issue when entering this information online.
“The questions I had regarding security of personal information were not answered and it is those concerns that keep me from going on that calculator.”
He went on to say that he did find information about Medi-Cal to be useful to him.
If residents of California, who don’t have health insurance, want to apply for health insurance must do so by March 31.
If the deadline is not met then residents may have to pay a $95 fee or one percent of his or her total income.
Residents are encouraged to seek health insurance soon because the fee will only increase over the years to come.
To educate students on the deadline and other health insurance information was nursing major, Ariday Avellaneda and psychology major, Martha Rodriguez who have been hired by USC to promote Covered California.
USC has worked with Project HOPE at Cerritos College to train and hire students to do outreach for Covered California.
Avellaneda and Rodriguez said that they have been working together since January but say it’s getting more important as the deadline approaches.
“It’s usually not to bad to manage, but I feel like you have to be responsible and prioritize school over work, but we get through it,” Avellaneda said.
