Latinos Trail in Health Insurance, Study Finds : Seminar: Advocacy group hopes the report will spark congressional lobbying for universal coverage.

Half of all Californians who do not have health insurance are Latino, according to a report issued Friday by a Latino advocacy group and the nonprofit Consumers Union.

The Latino Issues Forum, which helped finance the report, hopes it will ignite a grass-roots Latino effort to lobby congressional support for universal health insurance.

The San Francisco-based organization issued the report Friday at a seminar for about 60 local leaders, noting that if Latinos hope to influence the national debate on health care, it will be up to people such as them to target their members of Congress.

The report, titled “The Health Care Crisis in the Latino Community,” was prepared by Carlos Rodriguez of Consumers Union’s San Francisco office. In the report, he packaged research published over the years that dramatically illustrates the plight of Latinos.

Primary among the data was a report issued by the National Council of La Raza in Washington that found that 49.9% of all Californians lacking health insurance are Latino.

Latinos are three times more likely to be uninsured than blacks or Anglos, and more than twice as likely as Asian-Americans, that report said.

Furthermore, according to the La Raza report, 78.2% of all Latinos are either employed or are actively seeking work, but 60% of Latino workers do not have employer-provided health insurance.

Rodriguez noted that although many working Latinos do not qualify for Medi-Cal, they do not make enough money to buy their own health insurance either.

“One of the strong traditions of American society is if you work you’ll have a measure of security for yourself and your family,” Rodriguez said in an interview. “Latinos don’t have that.”

The health insurance crisis among Latinos was also documented in a UCLA research study issued in February. It found that 39% of Latinos under the age of 65 were uninsured in 1989.

In his report, Rodriguez said the Latino health care crisis has reached “unconscionable proportions. . . . We are being unnecessarily exposed to higher health risks due to our lack of access to the health care system.”

Guillermo Rodriguez Jr., director of policy and research for the Latino Issues Forum, said the seminar Friday resulted in just the kind of action he had hoped: Local Latino leaders agreed to form a committee to meet with local members of Congress.

Rodriguez said his organization advocates universal health insurance for undocumented residents as well as U. S. citizens. “If a health care policy includes only U. S. citizens, then the California health care crisis will continue,” he said.