Abstract
Health care reform and immigration reform are heated subjects in the United States of America. The main research question of this paper links the two by analyzing the effectiveness of government communication about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) towards Hispanics. The expansion of health insurance does not necessarily ensure access to care for all members of this minority group. Apart from questions of eligibility, immigrants face other obstacles, such as language, cultural differences, and perceptions about health care. These realities should be taken into consideration when communicating with Latinos, but was this the case for ACA? This paper presents the results of a corpus-based research of six government sources and six sources from non-profit organizations on ACA. An analysis of effective communication using 11 parameters was performed on this corpus and showed that undeniable communicative flaws, together with the too frequent lack of linguistic accuracy in Spanish, point out the need for experts when it comes to communicate publically with ethnic minorities.
Highlights
Health care reform and immigration reform are heated subjects in the United States of America
Este artículo se propone examinar en un corpus en qué medida se tomaron en consideración dichas condiciones particulares de la población hispana a la hora de comunicar sobre la reforma del sistema sanitario
The following section explains why it is important in this context to focus on the specific situation of the Hispanic immigrants
Summary
According to the US census Bureau, in 2012 there were 52.4 million Hispanics living in the United States. This means that roughly speaking, 1 out of 6 people are Hispanic. According to Ku and Jewers (2013), this means that overall insurance coverage has improved in the recent years for immigrant families. Barriers to enter are language, cultural differences, and perceptions about health care With respect to their linguistic situation, according to the U.S Census (2009), 76.6 percent speaks Spanish at home. Given the specificity of the Hispanic target audience, it is the purpose of this study to assess the existing public communication on ACA regarding its effectiveness.
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