Many Asian Americans in Sacramento County lack health insurance
02 04 08 - 13:46
Tevita Tausinga, left, and his daughter Losaline say that if Melelea Tausinga had health insurance, she would not have died of stomach cancer. Tausinga said his wife complained five years ago of pain but felt she couldn't afford medical treatment.
Even while her stomach was killing her, Melelea Tausinga remained the heart and soul of Sacramento's Tongan community.
She counseled troubled teens, was the water mom for Tongan rugby teams and danced everything from Tongan classics to her favorite, "The Electric Slide."
But Tausinga never went to a doctor because she didn't know where to go and felt she couldn't afford it anyway, her husband said.
Tausinga, who died Oct. 25 of stomach cancer at age 51, was among tens of thousands of Pacific Islanders, Korean Americans and Southeast Asians without health insurance.
These ethnic groups "are doing much worse than other subgroups in terms of health insurance and access to health care," according to a study of Asian Americans released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum.
Korean Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are less likely to be insured than other Asian American groups such as Japanese or Asian Indians and twice as likely to be uninsured as whites, according to an analysis of national health data from 2004-2006.
The disparity is particularly acute in California, home to a third of the nation's Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, said Cara James, the foundation's senior policy analyst for race and ethnicity.
"People who do not have health insurance delay much needed medical care, are more likely to forgo care because of costs, and when they do finally show up for care the conditions they have are often far more severe," James said. "They are more likely to show up with late stage cancer."
That's what happened to Tausinga, said her husband, Tevita Tausinga, who won't shave his beard or change his black clothes until his wife has been gone a year.
"She was almost everywhere, and she always followed the kids, who came by the hundreds to see her before she died," he said.
Melelea Tausinga, mother of four and grandmother of seven, not only gave herself to her community, she worked for more than 10 years as motel maid, then as teaching assistant at Susan B. Anthony Elementary, where her granddaughters attend. Neither job provided health insurance.
She kept working even after she started complaining five years ago about severe pain. "She told me to touch her stomach," her husband said.
"It was something like a stone but it was little. The main thing is, we didn't have money. She finally went to a doctor last May after we got Medi-Cal."
The doctor told her she had a cancerous tumor, but it took three months before her daughter-in-law Brianna Tausinga lined up a surgeon who would take Medi-Cal.
"They pretty much said we caught it too late," said Brianna Tausinga
Her weight dropped from 300 to 200 pounds.
Ofa Mann, who co-founded Tofa – a local organization which means Friendly Islands Youth of Sacramento in Tongan – with Melelea Tausinga said she didn't know where to turn for health care.
"It has to do with cultural barriers, too," Mann said. "I don't know of any Tongan health care workers. Other Tongans gave her some herbal treatment and they relied heavily on prayer and faith."
Her husband, a construction worker who has limited movement in his right arm, self-medicates because he, too, doesn't have health insurance.
Neither do many of the other several thousand Tongans in the Sacramento area, Mann said. There are 11,000 Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders in Sacramento County, according to the census.
Nationwide, 24 percent of non-elderly Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders don't have health insurance, compared with 21 percent of Vietnamese, 14 percent of Filipinos and 12 percent of Japanese and Asian Indians, according to the study.
Korean Americans, as a group, are not perceived as low income, but 31 percent of non-elderly Koreans have no insurance, James said, compared with 12 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 17 percent of all Asian Americans.
"A lot of Koreans work at small businesses that provide the least amount of health coverage to employees because of its cost," said Deanna Jang of the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum.
Many uninsured Asian Americans are eligible to get care at community clinics or through a California program that funds children and families above the federal poverty rate, Jang said. "Either they don't know how to access it or are afraid to access it because of their immigration status."
Aeyon Lee of the Sacramento Korean American Cancer Support Group, said most Korean immigrants she knows "return to Korea for major checkups and medical treatment because it's still cheaper than getting insurance here."
There are 10,100 Koreans in Sacramento County, census figures show.
Earlier this year Lee said that her organization, a breast cancer organization called Y-ME and the Sierra Lions Club offered free mammograms and Pap smears to 45 Korean immigrants, "many of whom had never had one before. Six women came out positive."
Tausinga didn't access health care until it was too late, but she walked 3 1/2 miles to raise money for breast cancer research, Mann said.