ABSTRACT
This chapter examines health services issues for Hispanic construction workers and their dependents, including health insurance coverage, health status, patterns of health services and expenditures, and sources of payment for medical care. Hispanic workers received more assistance from Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) than white, non-Hispanic workers. Hispanic construction workers were likely to work in blue-collar occupations, but less likely to have been self-employed and unionized when compared with white non-Hispanics. Hispanic children without insurance spent about one-quarter of the average amount Hispanic children with insurance had. Ethnic disparities existed within the uninsured children as well. The chapter documents ethnic disparities in insurance coverage, health status, health services, and sources of payment among construction workers and their children. Since employer-sponsored insurance is still the cornerstone of the US health care system and the predominant source of coverage for nonelderly adults, extending coverage through a worker's job would help alleviate and reduce uninsurance.
