Rising Out of the Gap

Inspiration

Because Florida has refused to accept the Medicaid expansion, a health care "coverage gap" has emerged: There are 600,000 people in Florida who cannot get health care because they do not qualify for Medicaid, and there are no other options for them under the Affordable Care Act plan. The lack of health care affects your everyday life, including your ability to work, to keep healthy, get treated for chronic health problems and avoid premature death.

What it does

Rising Out of the Gap proposes a short term and long term solution to the coverage gap problem. It involves training existing community organizations on 1) how to access basic health care services through "safety net" health care providers (like community health care centers providing free and low-cost services), if available and 2) how to contribute to a long term political campaign to influence state legislators to accept Medicaid expansion. This would involve training community members to identify individuals in the coverage gap and capture their stories in the form of short videos. That will leverage the existing resources of the organizations who already have contact with the target populations, or can more easily make contact with them, so when clients contact the organizations, they can be told where to go to get health care, and also be asked to create a video. This may be the only opportunity for people caught in the coverage gap to communicate directly to legislators about their personal difficulties. Then the videos can be packaged and edited, and used in political advocacy to convince target "hold out" legislators to accept the Medicaid Expansion. Other political efforts have thus far failed; the next step should be a public shaming campaign that focuses on how the legislators' action have affected real people.

How I built it

We spent two days pitching and developing ideas on how to provide access to health care for the lowest income Floridians who need it.

Challenges I ran into

We need to find ways to reach the clients, so collaborating with community organizations will be crucial. Contacting individuals who do not have reliable internet access will be difficult. We'll also have to enlist the help of PR firms to edit and package the videos into a convincing campaign. We will need to find an organization that can work on the lobbying aspect as many of our programs have restrictions on lobbying and political work. Some people are too embarrassed to share their stories. Many are unaware of this political issue.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We're proud of the discussions we've had and providing an idea of how to bring this disparity in coverage that affects so many Floridians to light. Hopefully something can be done to provide a long term solution to this serious issue.

What I learned

Not all of the team members were fully aware of the coverage gaps, so some team members learned more about the lack of health care. The more we are able to educate, the more we can help this issue get a resolution.

What's next for Rising Out of the Gap

Identifying resources to help us provide more visibility for this campaign such as production of a documentary and provide support to empower coverage gap individuals to work collectively to fix this life threatening situation resulting from political choices made by Florida leadership.

Built With

• pen-and-paper