AccessEscambia
| AccessEscambia | |
| Established | 2003 |
| Board officers | Diane Appleyard Ron Jackson Robert Kincaid, MD Jerry Maygarden Buzz Ritchie George Smith, MD Tommy Tait Dennis Taylor Ralph Tice Ronald Townsend Jim Vickery |
| Website | www.accessescambia.org |
AccessEscambia is a non-profit 501(c)4 organization that was established in 2003 to implement the recommendations made by the Escambia County Health Care Task Force on October 22, 2003. The Task Force had been established in 2001 to consider the problems caused by the number of residents in Escambia County without health insurance, and to make recommendations for providing health care to this population.
The three primary recommendations AccessEscambia was charged with implementing were:
- coordinate the care provided to the uninsured who enter the health care system through the emergency rooms or clinics;
- establish a low cost insurance plan based on Health Flex legislation that exempted providers from many of the state-mandated coverages; and
- to establish a system of primary health care delivery that would be funded by a half-cent sales tax increase.
Since its inception in 2003, AccessEscambia has secured $1.5 million in grant funding and implemented a coordinated care program in June 2007.
In 2004, AccessEscambia sought voter approval for a half-cent increase in the sales tax in November of 2004, but the effort failed at the ballot by a margin of 14,000 votes. However, the number of uninsured continued to grow, from approximately 54,000 people (one in six residents) in 2004 to 66,000 (or one of every five residents) by 2007.
In February of 2007, AccessEscambia's board of directors approved an effort to place the measure on another special referendum ballot. An ordinance was approved by the Escambia County Commission on March 26, 2007 and will be decided with a June 26, 2007 ballot referendum.
Tax details
If passed, the program would levy an additional half-cent tax on the first $5,000 of all sales except groceries and medication. The tax would take effect on January 1, 2008 and would be collected for ten years, after which it would need to be renewed by another voter referendum. The taxes would go in to a Qualified Resident Health Care Trust Fund, which would provide primary health care for up to 30,000 low-income, working residents in Escambia County.
