Gabriel Henao fled Colombia to escape a guerrilla group who, he said, twice threatened to kill him. After some time in Mexico, he arrived in Colorado in July 2022, settling in Fort Collins.
His severe stomach pain started when he was in Mexico, he said. It was debilitating and left him bedridden for days at a time. The pain continued to plague Henao in the United States, but he said he didn’t make enough money cleaning houses to pay for health insurance.
Colorado did not offer Medicaid coverage to residents living in the country without legal status such as Henao, or to immigrants in the mandatory five-year waiting period after receiving their green cards. Without coverage, Henao couldn’t get a proper checkup, he said, let alone a diagnosis or treatment for his stomach pain.
That changed at the beginning of January, when Henao received care through Colorado’s OmniSalud program, which provides health care coverage to low-income immigrants in the country without documentation. When the program started accepting enrollments in 2022 it covered 10,000 people without requiring them to pay premiums, and this year Colorado expanded the number of zero-premium slots to 11,000.
Alianza NORCO, a nonprofit organization that supports immigrants in northern Colorado with legal and other resources, is helping Henao acclimate to the U.S. and assisted with his application to the OmniSalud program.
“I started to get really scared, nervous, anxious because I didn’t have money to care for my health,” said Henao, 44, a father of three who owned a clothing warehouse in Colombia. He has applied for asylum, saying his life was in danger in his native country.
Now, after undergoing an appendectomy a few weeks ago, “I feel excellent,” he said in Spanish through a translator provided by the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.
Colorado is one of a growing number of Democratic-dominated states that are extending health care…
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