OUT & ABOUT: AmeriHealth Head Michael Rashid Keynotes For Urban League

BY DENISE CLAY/ Among the people sharing his knowledge with those who attended the National Urban League’s conference here in Philadelphia was Michael Rashid, the President and CEO of AmeriHealth Caritas.

AmeriHealth is a local company that works with programs like Medicare, Medicaid the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and other managed health care programs designed to help low-income people access needed health care.

Rashid spoke at the Urban League’s opening session last Wednesday night as part of Urban League President Marc Morial’s “State of the Urban League” address. In his speech, he connected the right to health care to other rights that have taken a lot of time for people to fully assert.

“This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice,” Rashid said. “The issues connected to health care are issues that make the Urban League as critical now as it was 50 years ago. Dr. [Martin Luther] King said that of all forms of inequality, lack of health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

AmeriHealth Caritas is a $4 billion company that operates in 15 states. With the advent of the Affordable Health Care law and armed with the knowledge that 20 percent of the nation’s dollars are going toward healthcare, AmeriHealth is poised to do great things, Rashid said.

“There are tremendous opportunities to help people and there are thousands willing to do the work,” he said. “We want to provide health-care opportunities for businesses so that they can help people.”

Rashid has been working toward making those connections for a long time. He grew up in Birmingham, Ala. in the 1950s, at a time when it was known as the “Pittsburgh of the South” because of all of the coal mines and steel mills operating there.

With coal mines come lung-directed illnesses.

“Tuberculosis was a big issue,” Rashid said in an interview with the Philadelphia Sunday Sun. “My father worked for the Negro Tuberculosis Association and on Sunday nights, he went out into the coal mines and went door to door to try and get people to get chest x-rays, because that was the way it was detected then. My father worked long hours so I didn’t get to see him much. But I went with him on these trips on Sundays because I didn’t have school that day. I got to spend time with him and he was doing a great work that saved lives. That left an indelible impression on me.”

He’s been at AmeriHealth Caritas for more than 15 years. On his watch the company has spawned programs like Healthy Hoops, a basketball program that addresses asthma in low-income communities.

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