 And we are navigating the journey today's journey is very personal right here at home or maybe bigger than that. We're going to talk to my friend and everybody's met her before. She's the genius. She is the best when it comes to talking about how you get from being without a job and losing your prepaid healthcare into getting something else. So, Martha, Martha Copeland is a dear friend and you all know I only talked to dear friends. Martha has been with us before and she always gives us the very best, the best and information about healthcare. Martha. Aloha. It's so nice to see you again and thank you so much for having me return. I love being with you. Well, and the audience loves hearing from you. Since we are in the craziest time of our lives, this pandemic, and people are losing their jobs, people that have had jobs forever who never thought they would be gone. That's true. So now, and in the state of Hawaii where prepaid healthcare is the law. Now all of a sudden, they don't have any healthcare. So, we go to Martha and help. Thank you, Marsha. Yep. So, last March, I started getting a lot of phone calls from people who had lost their jobs and also found out they were losing their health insurance coverage. So, these calls became so numerous that I got together with a group of friends, and we decided to start Hawaii helps. That's Hawaii health enrollment literacy program and services. And what that does is it allows us to help them navigate all the different options that they may have affordable options that they may have to pick up health insurance. So, I put a little PowerPoint together. And that hopefully we can show on the screen that just the cover covers what we've done thus far, but I've been getting some wonderful feedback from people, some people, when they lose their job, and they lose their insurance. At the end of the month, they cannot pick up medications the following month. And a lot of people never think about the loss of insurance. I mean, it's such a difficult thing to imagine losing your job. So then when you find out you've lost your insurance, generally when you think about, oh, let me go pick up my medication. That's when people start to recognize that they don't have insurance. And then the options to pick up insurance is not as easy to navigate because, as you said, Marsha, we have a this great prepaid health law. And if you have a job, your job is covering your insurance if you meet the requirements. So imagine, as you lose a job, you don't even know where to begin the process. So I have a PowerPoint, if that can come up, and we'll just go through some of the highlights that I put together. Wonderful. You want to read that for us. Yeah, well, I'm not seeing it on my screen yet. Okay. Hawaii helps provides access to affordable health care. A must for Hawaii's newly unemployed, uninsured. Yeah, I have it now. Yeah, so Hawaii helps, you know, provides, again, this very valuable access to affordable health care. And because we're in this, this whole system, this whole new world of how do we figure out how to do things without face to face contact. We have a virtual, no face to face approach to the enrollment process. So a person can call into Hawaii helps, and we help direct them to the health care dot gov site that allows them to get affordable coverage. Very, very easily. So the entire process can be completed in just 15 minutes. And then a lot of guidance tells people, if you lose your job to go out and pick up Medicaid. So what's nice about our program is if your income is at a certain level, it will transfer that information to the state, Medicaid, that quest department, and you'll automatically get a decision from the state regarding Medicaid. So our program even can help people who have lost their jobs and may qualify for Medicaid. So we have another slide. Before you go on, explain, explain what Medicaid, because people get confused with Medicaid and Medicare. So separate those two. Sure, sure. Medicaid, I looked at it as a program that aids you. And one of the ways it aids you is with health insurance. So if you have income below a certain level, each state has their own requirement, and you meet other requirements, you may qualify for insurance that the state of Hawaii basically provides for you through four or five different health insurance companies here, and your premium will be zero for the plan. And when you go in for health care, most of your costs will be at no cost. So it's a great program for people who qualify. So that's Medicaid. All folks. Well, it also can be for folks who have a disability, and they may qualify for Medicare, and Medicare cares for you, because throughout your working lifetime or spouse, you have had money taken out of every single paycheck to pay social security and Medicare taxes. So for people who are entitled to Medicare, that is a taxpayer, partially the money comes from your own funds that you have been paying in taxes throughout your entire working life. Medicaid is, it's just something that you didn't even know you might need. You lose your job unexpectedly, you lose your income, and Medicaid may be available to you to help you stay in short, because that's the key. You want to stay in short. Okay, so let's go back to help the health. So we focus on Honolulu County residents, but actually, you know, our program could work anywhere, but we focus on the people who have lost their coverage, due to this COVID-19 breakout they've lost their jobs. So many times their insurance goes along with it. So our program is fully scalable, and can easily include people, you know, from other counties in a beautiful state of Hawaii. And also we have help people in other states as well. So it's very, very important that people understand there are options that are affordable that many, many people do not know about it. And again, the process can take just 15 minutes. And, you know, a lot of people that we have help are so grateful, very, very grateful that we have put together this Hawaii Health Helps Health Enrollment Literacy Program and Services, because basically we understand that if you've never lost your job unexpectedly, if you never lost your health insurance unexpectedly, how would you know where to turn. And because we have many offices who have closed and the HR department may not be able to answer the phones. So you don't even have the old employer to talk to. So when they call us, we can talk to them, and we can help them with the process. And many times when people call us, they love calling a local, you know, operation, because if you give me a name, I probably know how to spell your name. I know how to spell the name of your street. Some people, they can't, they take some 10 minutes to help someone on the mainland, just spell the name of your street. So here, if you throw Kaliani-Oleo Highway out at me, I'll take care of it for you. So we're really happy that we're actually helping. So they get to speak by contacting, they get to speak a real person. Yes, they can speak to a real person, but actually the way our program is designed, we can, they can actually complete the whole process online. So what we often do, we will talk to them so that we can share with them. This is the link that you can use to go ahead and pick up affordable health insurance. But if they want us to hold their hand, we're more than happy to do so. And I've met so many wonderful people just helping them. I mean, it takes just 15 minutes. That's it. And you can have insurance, if you qualify, you can have insurance cards on the way, and a very affordable health insurance plan. Again, it helps to keep you insured. That's the main thing. So that if you were mentioning the prescription. So once I get this, now I can go back and get my prescription again. Absolutely. Absolutely. Once you have your insurance, the insurance includes prescription drug coverage. It includes visits to your doctor, hospitalization. It's a comprehensive plan with all the essential health benefits. So absolutely, this will be insurance that you can use to pick up your medications as well. And that's been most alarming to me, Marsha. That's one of the reasons that we put this volunteer organization together, because there were people calling me, telling me that they probably would not survive because they had a medication that if they do not take it is life threatening. Oh yeah, we can have people going into diabetic comas and people with premature strokes and heart attacks because without insurance without being able to see your doctor, you cannot get your medications refilled. So if you take the chance that maybe you'll get a job in another month and get get insurance again, but if you don't, then you know you're in trouble. So that's why it's on our heart to just take care of our community by making sure everybody stays in short. Now, my husband's medication comes in the mail. Yes, what about people that is if there's a cut off between the time it's supposed to come in the mail. Does it stop. If there's a break in your insurance coverage, then those medications will no longer be sent to you. So the key is staying in short. So that's why we put this together. And like I said, we've been getting just wonderful testimonials from people because we have people on Marsha right here. We all thought the hotels would be reopening September 1. And now we've learned due to the surge that those hotels will not be opening. So I've been hearing from many hotel workers, they have now been told they were furloughed but now they actually have been terminated so they're losing their insurance coverage. They actually lost it as of the end of last month, so they were really scrambling to figure out how they can get affordable health insurance, because there is an insurance called Cobra continuation coverage, but Marsha for a family of four in Hawaii. It's $1,700 and for an individual it can be as much as $600 per month. If you lost your job $1,700 a month. That's right for a family of four. Yeah. So, we often can find plans for people that are under $100 for individuals and families maybe around $200 or $300. That is so significant. People think we're angels but we're not angels. We're just following the process. It's the Affordable Care Act plans. We do it right through healthcare.gov. So this is not some, you know, a program that you never heard of. It's the two insurance companies, Kaiser and also the HMSA, both on the marketplace. And it's so important for people to understand there is affordable healthcare coverage. I had a guy and he sent me a text message and he said, Martha, he said, I would have died if it were not for this program. He said because I could not, he said he maxed out Marsha. He maxed out his credit cards to pay for health insurance. Who maxes out their credit card? You never imagined, who would ever imagine you would have to pay your health insurance premiums using your credit card. And so he was in touch with us. I got him a plan in 15 minutes. It was something that he could afford. And one of the things that I was also going to talk about is I started this GoFundMe campaign. GoFundMe. You heard about that, right? Yes. Raise money for different things. And we collected like $5,000 in like no time. So I've been able to, for as long as the money lasts, people who sign up get their first month's premium reimbursed. So imagine that. So, so let me, let me understand. So on your GoFundMe page, people can fund that. And out of that, you reimbursed somebody for their first month. That's correct. Absolutely. And I tell people like, I had a friend and she said she said money and I said, oh, I didn't get the money. Is everything okay? Make sure that nobody took your card. So she said, oh, I didn't do it yet. And she said, Martha, I want to give a big amount. I said, no, $10, $20, those very small amounts add up and they can help someone. So I told her, don't worry about that. But we've helped people again in the hotel industry. We've helped people in the restaurant industry. Also a lot of the people who do like conventions, when conventions come to town, people who set up those conventions, all of those folks have lost their jobs. Think about it, Marsha, people who make lays, you know, you don't need that, you know, people who make the bracelets that people can't wait to take home, all of the souvenir shops, people who just ring up merchandise for people to take home. They've all lost their jobs. Now, you know, Hawaiian Airlines has talked about a layoff and about 1000 people, I believe have been laid off and a couple 100 of them are pilots. So we have all kinds of people who have lost their jobs. And when you lose your job, you lose your health insurance. And if you cannot get another job to replace it. How do you find affordable health insurance? Now, yes, but speaking of losing their jobs, the NFL, the basketball, all of these people are now out of jobs. And even at UH, the coaches for the teams, because they want payroll, big salaries. And I pray they call me if there's anybody who's connected to that industry, please, please have them call me because again, Cobra is very expensive and most people, they get a letter that their job is ending and their insurance is ending. And they're told that they can pick up this Cobra and continue their insurance. However, the cost of that Cobra is very expensive. And there may be some affordable options for people on this healthcare.gov site that we navigate you through. I'll just tell you some of the numbers. If you're married and you'll be making less than, you know, $80,000 for 2020, it makes sense to see if you qualify for something, a family, same thing. If you're making less than 80, 90,000 family of four, you may be able to pick up a really affordable plan that saves you thousands of dollars. And who doesn't need to save money during a pandemic. We need to save our money. Yeah, we need to pay for other things like our mortgage, our rent, our utilities, and of course our cell phone service cable, I don't know, but cell phone, we use these cell phones, there are smartphones, there are brains. So we need to keep our cell phones going. So I think I have another slide. I wanted to talk about someone we help that I would say would be sort of a non traditional type of a person. Here I have, we had waiters waitresses, tour bus operators, banquet captains, rental car agencies, imagine all the folks that work for the rental car companies, Hertz has filed for bankruptcy. And the sad thing, I don't know if you know, but when a company files for bankruptcy is a possibility that they do not have to pay you your money that's been sitting in your retirement. I just had this this. Yes, I just had it this week. A person was working on transferring their money doing an IRA roll over, and it was for Marsha it was for over $300,000. And guess what they sent me a letter, and the company said, we're sorry but on the federal guidelines, we do not know if this pension is 100% funded. So we cannot pay out your money. We cannot pay out any lump sum money. $300,000 is left on the table. And this person doesn't know what's going to happen so we need to find ways to save money. So this insurance, finding affordable insurance is a way to do it. I know people are not accustomed to finding health insurance. Nobody's knocking on the door for life insurance or long term care insurance but who talks to you about health insurance that comes through your employer. It comes through your job. But because of this unprecedented situation where we have like 100,000 people right now as we speak in our own community, who may not be working. We don't want them to go uninsured. So that's why we help. If you could bring the slide up again, I wanted to go ahead and talk about some of the people that we've helped. We've also helped piano teachers, and also gig workers who were making good money, maybe doing Uber or Lyft, and their rides, rides are down. So we've even had to help them. There are people who do Airbnb. Those people aren't coming. So even they have had a serious significant disruption to income. But I want to talk about an MBA professional that reached out to me recently. His name is Shannon Scott. Shannon Scott and he plays overseas. So he is a professional basketball player, but he has been playing over in Lithuania. So he was playing in Lithuania for the last few seasons. But because of his age, and this is all on the internet, I'm not giving anything away, and he gave me permission to talk about this today. But he was 26 years old, excuse me, he was 25 years old when he left to play overseas. So you can stay on your parents insurance until age 26. So he was on his parents insurance, everything's great. He's over playing basketball professionally in Lithuania. But due to the pandemic, they decided to send all the Americans back to the US. So he turns up back in the US, and he had full comprehensive insurance in Lithuania, but in the US, no insurance. And because he's now reached that wonderful age of 26, I love 26. Let's do 26. I'm good now with what I know now no I want it with the same knowledge I have, but 26 the body, you know all that goes with that. But anyway, so he has his mom reaches out to me and she says, Oh my goodness, she said my son, no longer can be covered under our plan. What do we do. No problem. So he I contacted him gave me his information. 15 minutes Marsha 15 minutes later, our professional NBA player had a comprehensive health insurance plan on its way to him the cards, very, very reasonably priced, very affordable, and he stays in short. But even a basketball play would you ever think a professional basketball player could lose their health insurance. Well, but you know with an NFL all, you know, across all of the sports people. Right, I think that we think in terms of somebody takes care of them, because we've just never seen anything like this before. No, we've never seen anything like this before. Some people I think they're a little reluctant to call. I think that they believe that, okay, I'll do cobra, but that money over a lot of money is so much. So there's affordable plans, and they're subsidized by the government and why not take advantage of them. We are designed for such a time as this, even though who could have ever imagined that we would end up in this particular situation, but help is available Hawaii helps help enrollment literacy program and services no one has to remember all that. All you have to remember is Hawaii helps. So if you're out there scrambling to figure out your health insurance, the cobra is too expensive. You give us a call. Give us your contact number. Yeah, I have a slide with the contact information on it. So email me at Martha at Hawaii helps.com just hi. It's the health care.gov is not any special insurance thing that we're doing. This is using the government system to be able to quickly and easily get you an affordable plan. The health costs are high, and the newly unemployed and uninsured could end up spending $1,700 a month as a family, 600 individually, and you could pick up one of these healthcare.gov under $100 $1,700 so you don't eat is that it. Well, this gentleman, you know, he told me he maxed out his credit cards, you know, and then he couldn't do it anymore. So he was going to be without this medication for his to keep his diabetes under control. So he told me he said I would die. And a lot of people don't realize this but the other reason that people really should help in this thing that I'm doing is if we have people who are unable to keep their health insurance and unable to pick up their medications. They will end up at the emergency room. Yes. So if that cost also you get a bill from them. Right. If they don't have insurance, they get sick. They have nowhere else to go but to the emergency room. Then we have a surge in COVID cases. So we already have people at the emergency rooms for that. But then even though we may still have our insurance, if we are trying to compete with the uninsured, who have nowhere else to turn. That's why we have to help people find affordable health insurance and Hawaii helps. That is what we're designed for to help you with that. And that's what people understand when you take Cobra, the state and the state is already without tourism has pitiful budget constraints. So that goes to the budget. Cobra actually, yeah, Cobra continuous coverage of companies, certain companies that depends on how many people work at the company, they're required by law to offer employees this Cobra coverage. So if that is offered to you, you're paying the full price of the coverage to the insurance company, plus an administration fee. So when we're working and our employer is paying for insurance, we have no idea how much insurance is. But when we go on Cobra, we're paying the full cost of the insurance that our employer was was paying. So at that point, the state is not involved. The state is not involved in Cobra. So it's just Medicaid that the state. If you're Medicaid. Correct. Okay, right. So some people, if they qualify and go and Medicaid, and I heard that our numbers are really growing. Oh, yeah, I actually heard a very interesting interesting statistic that of the 22% of people who apply for Medicaid, only 12% were approved. So sometimes people forget to put on their application that they'll be collecting unemployment. So when you collect unemployment and you have other monies available to you, you may not qualify for Medicaid. So some people need to realize that because I had three calls just today, Marcia, and all three calls for people who said, Oh, I lost my job, I was told to apply to Medicaid, but I just got my denial letter. Now I need to figure out how to get health insurance. So if they had worked with us on the application that we put in, if they qualify, it would have automatically gone to Medicaid. Okay. Wow. This is unbelievable. Yeah. And to think that the White House is trying to get rid of Obamacare at it right in the middle of this pandemic. And then we have this other part of, well, I had insurance, but I don't have a job. So now I don't have insurance. This is all too much. This is all too much. Again, can we put up the telephone number of the contact for you? Yeah, because this is scary. And so people that need help, even if they don't, can they just call that number and talk to you? Absolutely. Absolutely. They'll get my service and they'll find me. If they can't find me, I'll call you back. I have so many questions, and I'm sure other people do too, that we never thought of. That's right. Especially working in Hawaii, prepaid healthcare. Oh, I'm always going to be taken care of. And then we have this. So now real quick again, how about the, what were you doing, collecting the money? Oh, the GoFundMe. So if anybody wants to go to Health Enrollment Literacy Program and Services, GoFundMe, and they should be able to find a link to make a donation. So they donate, if I go and put in money, that will help pay for somebody else's care. Is that correct? That's correct. And then we send you, we keep updating people who's been helped. Yes. Oh, that is wonderful. Now the people that have been helped, do they know somebody else donated? They don't know who donated, but they know that it's through the GoFundMe. Yes. They can't write and say thank you or anything like that. They do. They actually do send us text messages. They send it to you and you send it too. And I put it on the GoFundMe site so people can follow. Yes. Oh, wonderful. Okay. Well, I am delighted to spend this time with you, as always. And you will come back. Yes, I will. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. Aloha. Thank you so much. And we'll see you next time. I love you.