Latinos Left Out on Insurance, Study Says : Health: A UCI survey says 44% of that ethnic group lack private or government medical coverage. Most of the Latinos doing without are undocumented residents.

Latinos in Orange County are more likely than any other ethnic group to be without health insurance and therefore have less access to medical care, according to a UC Irvine study.

“These findings are disturbing not only because of the potential effects on the health of this population, but also because Latinos are the fastest-growing minority in the United States,” the researchers concluded in an article published in the California Medical Assn.’s Western Journal of Medicine.

One out of every four county residents is Latino, according to the 1990 Census.

The study was not surprising to Latino and health community leaders, who have been leading the effort to increase health care to the poor.

Irene Martinez, community services specialist at the George Washington Community Center, said Thursday that a separate study conducted by her center for Anaheim showed that lack of health insurance is not related to ethnicity or sex but to economics.

“A majority of people were working people,” she said, “but they were having trouble (buying insurance) because their wages are so low. They are hired part time so that companies don’t have to pay insurance.”

The UCI survey of 958 families living in the northern inland part of the county showed that 44% of the Latinos did not have either private or government-sponsored health insurance, such as Medi-Cal; the figure for whites was 16%. Of the Latinos without insurance, 38% were citizens and 60% undocumented residents.

Although the findings were similar to a previous national study, the researchers concluded that “by some measures, Latinos in Orange County experience less access to medical care than a national sample.”

For example, the local office of the American Cancer Society struggled to get medical care for a Latino woman with cervical cancer whose amnesty application was pending, local Cancer Society officials said.

Because the cancer was in a contained area and had not spread, Medi-Cal did not consider the illness an emergency and was not willing to pay for treatment, said Dorothy Liff, associate executive director of the local Cancer Society office.

When patients wait until the disease worsens for treatment, Liff said, cancer not only becomes more dangerous, but medical costs skyrocket.

“It’s penny-wise and pound-foolish,” she said.

UCI researchers also concluded that Latinos are less likely to have seen a physician in the previous year than whites and that language created difficulty in obtaining care.