Despite an increasing number of people with health insurance because of “Obamacare,” Mountain View’s free health clinic hidden in the basement of the YMCA building near El Camino Hospital is still having to turn patients away who are unable to get care anywhere else, says RotaCare executive director Mirella Nguyen.
When asked if the clinic was seeing fewer patients because of Obamacare, Nguyen said, “That’s what we expected to happen.” Instead, there’s been waves of people who are newly enrolled in Obamacare but who can’t get access to medical care. There aren’t enough primary care physicians to go around, she says.
The RotaCare clinic at 2400 Grant Road is one of the local nonprofits that benefit from the Voice’s annual Holiday Fund donations from readers. It has existed for nearly 20 years in Mountain View, and is one of several RotaCare clinics around the Bay Area founded by the Rotary Club.
State officials say it’s their goal to enroll another 1.7 million in Obamacare by February, on top of 1.2 million who signed up in the initial enrollment period that ended in April.
“People have coverage but they aren’t able to use it,” Nguyen said. “People are getting wait-listed — they don’t get assigned to pediatricians or primary care physicians for months.”
With so many newly insured people, many doctors are too busy to volunteer at the clinic, Nguyen said. RotaCare started the year with 50 primary care doctors who were volunteering a few days a month on a regular basis, and nearly a third backed away from it or stopped volunteering with the clinic entirely this year. Nguyen said the clinic’s doctors are increasingly burned out and need to spend their free time recuperating.
Though its role is changing, Nguyen says there will be a need for the clinic for the foreseeable future. “Acting as a safety net for this lagging system — it’s been a little bit of a challenge to figure out, ‘what does that mean?'” Nguyen said.
“I talk to my staff about this all the time — it would be great if an organization like us didn’t have to exist,” she said. “The fact that we continue to exist in Mountain View and serve a huge need for families is really telling. There is a lack of access to health care, and a lack of primary care physicians nationwide.”
The clinic sees a variety of patients ranging in age, ethnicity and economic backgrounds. They have many different illnesses, from end stage cancer to workplace injuries, which seem to be on the rise at the clinic, Nguyen said.
Some RotaCare patients said they still do not qualify for any government health care and can’t afford their employer’s insurance either. The free clinic is a huge help, they say.
“Obamacare knocked their health care out,” said Mountain View resident and single mother Rosana Arce said of her three kids. Because of changes to how income is calculated, she lost her subsidized health care, but continues to make “too little to actually pay $1,700 a month for private insurance through my work” for herself and her three kids. Arce is a school psychologist employed by a San Mateo County school district.
Last Friday she said she saved hundreds of dollars on vaccines for her son at RotaCare, required by his school. When asked her opinion of the American health care system, she said, “Oh yeah, it sucks.”
Another single mother living in Mountain View, Miriam Obando, said she had lost her job as a house cleaner and was desperate to obtain vaccinations for her infant daughter. The shots couldn’t wait the four months it could take to get enrolled into subsidized health care. “She actually was really worried; she had no idea what to do,” said an interpreter. The shots she got for free at RotaCare for her newborn daughter were worth $900.
With the closure of the county office for social services at 100 Moffett Blvd. to make way for apartments, the county has begun to staff nonprofits like RotaCare with social workers to connect the poor with various programs providing food and housing, among other things. If RotaCare were to receive more funding, Nguyen said, there’s interest in hiring a a social worker or health educator to meet demand. Social workers visit only a handful of times a month, and often represent only one program.
In some cases “people are aware there might be coverage options for them,” Nguyen said. “They don’t understand we are not a primary care office. They come to us for information, then we can steer them to the social service agencies that can help them enroll.”
The clinic may use new funds to hire a second mental health counselor as well. Nguyen said the clinic has been able to fill a need for bilingual mental health counseling that other free mental health clinics can’t provide, such as the Community Health Awareness Council, which uses student therapists who don’t always speak Spanish and may not be available when someone really needs help. “There’s a huge demand for bilingual services, which is where we have been able to capitalize and offer services,” Nguyen said.
Email Daniel DeBolt at ddebolt@mv-voice.com
