The Rio Grande Valley has some of the highest levels of uninsured people around the country, but the director a community clinic in Brownsville says the newly upheld Affordable Care Act will likely change that.
The law brings it one step closer to bringing health care coverage to some of those people, like Rosa Sauceda.
The Brownsville resident has no health insurance, but she considers herself healthy.
Sauceda added that she is glad the Sumpreme Court up held President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.
"I think it’s good,” she said. “I think I will be able to apply to get health coverage.”
Sauceda is not alone.
Action 4 News crunched up numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The four counties in the Rio Grande Valley have some of highest numbers of people without health insurance in Texas, the country.
In all, approximately 35 percent of Valley residents do not have a health coverage plan.
Using 2010 census numbers, that number comes to more than 447 thousand people.
Dr. Paula Gomez said that number will go down.
"I think we're going to see a lot more patients," she said.
For more than two decades, she has led Brownsville's Community Health Center and the New Horizon Medical Center.
Dr. Gomez said most of the patients there do not have insurance.
A large number of them will benefit from under the newly upheld law.
"We will now have the ability to expand services for those patients that are doing without health care," she concluded.
Dr. Gomez said, bottom line, the law will improve health care access in South Texas.
Both clinics she oversees are already working to adapt to the new changes.
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