TAKE FIVE!

October 20, 2020

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
Hello, I’m Megan Mullally-Gorr. Welcome to Sullivan 180 Presents Take Five!. Our guest today is Luis Ocasio from MiSN, welcome Luis. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Luis Ocasio:
Hello. Thank you so much, Meaghan, for having me. It’s a very great opportunity.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
Introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about MiSN please.

Luis Ocasio:
So, my name is Luis Ocasio, as you stated, I’m a New York state navigator with MiSN. So MiSN stands for Maternal Infant Services Network. This is a nonprofit organization that serves Orange County, Sullivan County, Putnam, Duchess, and Ulster. So we have multiple programs like the Navigator program. That’s including myself. That’s where we believe that healthcare is a human right, and we’re here to help anyone in need finding healthcare in affordable through the New York state of health. We have something called the community health advocates, which we don’t only just provide assistance with the accessing health coverage. But we also assist with the clients that need help dealing with complex medical bills or low cost prescriptions. And just in general, how to manage your insurance coverage.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
You are a certified New York state navigator. You gave us a brief introduction of what that means, but tell me what your job is on a daily basis.

Luis Ocasio:
So as a state navigator, I’m here to assist people that just need assistance with health coverage. They don’t understand what they might be eligible for. They just need help. With affordable healthcare, I have a lot of people that they have coverage, but it doesn’t cover much and it’s extremely expensive. So I’m here to help light the ways for people and give them enough knowledge about this topic of insurance coverage and stuff.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
So you told me the last time we spoke and I should know this, but open enrollment is happening soon. What are the dates and what do we need to know?

Luis Ocasio:
Okay. So I know that it’s a lot going on with the COVID situation. So there is a little bit of changes out of the norm, but open enrollment starts November 15th and it continues on to next year, but if you want coverage starting January 1st, the open enrollment is between November 15th and December 15th. Anything after December is going to lead into later coverage. So anything after December 15th will be like February coverage and so forth.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
So who is eligible for coverage, who should be reaching out to you?

Luis Ocasio:
Honestly, if you live in New York state, you have the right to contact me to reach out for coverage. Even if you have coverage already, and you’re just curious, you can definitely check what your eligibility would be. We have something on the website that’s called an estimation tool. So it would give you an idea based off of certain requirements

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
For somebody who was going to call you for assistance. Say you get to the portion where you’re going to fill out your application. What type of information is asked for on the application, what information would they need?

Luis Ocasio:
Just their demographics, their personal identifying information, like social security or whatever it is. If they’re immigrants, I can still help them with receiving coverage. Household income is a very important thing. So if it’s just like unemployment or paystubs anything like that it would be nice to have, or your taxes that were filed in the previous year. Other than that, you don’t really need that much. You don’t need a lot of information. You just come and you talk to me and whatever documents you might be missing, that’s okay. We can always go back into it and that’s not a problem.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
How can people stay up to date on what’s going on with MiSN. So that’s going to be a multilevel question, I think. First can you tell us MiSN’s website and then specific contact information for you.

Luis Ocasio:
We have a website, it’s www.MiSN-ny.org. On that website we have links to our social media for the actual organization there’s a Facebook account. You just type in maternal infant services network. There’s also an Instagram page that we have; that one is just MiSN_NY_org. If they want to reach me or they want to reach anyone else, the number is +1 800-453-4666. Okay. And we have great staff. The environment of our organization is just focused on helping people. For me personally, if you want to reach me for insurance help, my phone number is (845) 238-9691. And my email is LOcasio@ MiSN-NY.org.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
Okay. So is there anything else that you’d like to add? Anything that we missed?

Luis Ocasio:
One thing I will say, I take this position very personally because just a year ago I experienced a tragedy, I lost my baby and the insurance did not cover us and it was the biggest deal ever. This was through my wife’s father’s employer. It was just a big drama. And I personally come from a place where I understand what it’s like to not have coverage and to feel that dread because health care is something you can’t play with. And I’m here to really help anyone that really just has a need. So I strongly recommend anyone that needs help to always reach out to me.

Meaghan Mullally-Gorr:
Well, thank you for sharing that. That’s a deeply personal thing to share, but I think that it’ll touch a lot of people and that’s how you build trust. So I really appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing that. Luis, it’s so great to talk to you again, thank you very much for taking this interview today. We really, really appreciate you. We so appreciate MiSN and thank you for all of the work you do in the county.

Luis Ocasio:
Thank you so much for this opportunity.