MIAMI — Salsa music blares from the food court in a rundown Miami shopping center as Latinos head to a kiosk and an office showing signs for “Obamacare,” where they hope to renew their health coverage plans before the year ends.
It’s areas near this mall where former President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul is more popular than anywhere in the country, according to federal data. The region has also shifted away from Democrats to Republicans in recent years, with former President Donald Trump hosting several rallies here as part of his outreach to Latino voters.
Trump has vowed to renew efforts to repeal and replace the 2010 law — something that would be felt heavily in the region and could possibly reverse some of the GOP shift among South Florida’s Latinos, experts here say.
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has already seized on Trump’s statements about “Obamacare,” enacted when Biden was vice president, as part of its broader efforts to shape the widely expected 2024 rematch between him and Trump.
“Health insurance is something that is extremely needed for everyone,” said Odalys Arevalo, one of the managing partners of a health insurance agency serving Spanish-speaking clients in Miami. “And I know that everybody that supports the Republican Party that has health insurance through Obamacare would not support the fact that it would be taken away from one day to another. That is a fact.”
Arevalo and her business partner, Mercy Cabrera, started enrollment centers to help people navigate the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces and remember how some Cubans would walk away uttering “no, no, no,” after seeing the name “Obamacare,” which was coined by Republicans opposing the overhaul as an expensive government takeover of health insurance.
Insurers could no longer deny coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions, and that drew many Latinos to consider it, Arevalo says. In the following years, the women started enrolling tens of thousands, earning the nickname of “Madrinas del Obamacare,” or Obamacare godmothers, evoking the crucial role godparents play in Latino culture.
They’ve since renamed themselves “Las Madrinas de los Seguros,” or insurance godmothers, because they offer other plans. But they continue to feature the word Obamacare on their office walls and in their ads.
“Obamacare” is seen throughout Miami in advertising flags, businesses and bus signs. And federal data from the Centers…
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