Anyone who believes race is an irrelevant factor when it comes to America’s healthcare system is not looking at the cold grave facts.
In comparison to whites, minorities in the U.S. die at higher rates from nearly every known disease, and suffer disproportionately from otherwise treatable illnesses as a result of inadequate or non-existent access to healthcare.
The race issue insofar as political rhetoric spewed in the media by politicians, and pundits alike claim that minorities have it no worse when it comes to healthcare. The message continually spun that color has no place in the dialog of healthcare, not only distracts people from the fact that institutional racism still exists, and provides no tangible proof that ensures healthcare in this country is colorblind.
Ask any person of color who lost a loved one because they were too poor to see a doctor and forced to wait until the prognosis was fatal.
Historically, the experience of many minorities in the U.S. with healthcare meant receiving reactive rather than proactive care, at clinics, urgent care centers, and emergency rooms, which costs the country more money with less care for all in the end.
With the ever failing economy, the majority of uninsured people are non-whites. According to a study by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “Unemployment rates are higher in certain communities of color, and compared to whites, people of color had lower rates of health coverage and more difficulty accessing the healthcare system.”
Across all racial lines, black males suffer the most due to poor or non-existent access to healthcare. Recent data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Office of Minority Health, shows that although black males only make up only 13.5 percent of the American population, they are more than twice as likely to die from prostate cancer when compared to white males. In addition, 30 percent more likely to die from heart disease, twice as likely to have diabetes and more than a two times higher rate of dying from the disease, plus 60 percent more likely to die from a stroke.
According to the CDC, “African-American stroke survivors are more likely to become disabled and have difficulty with activities of daily living than non-Hispanic whites.”
The data is just as grim for black women when compared to white woman. Black women have a 34 percent higher chance of dying from breast cancer, twice as likely to die from stomach cancer, and 22 times higher percentage of being diagnosed with AIDS as well as a 20 percent higher rate of death.
In 2007, blacks accounted for 49 percent of HIV/AIDS cases, more than seven times the AIDS rate of non-white Hispanic males.
“Whites live an average of 5-7 times longer than blacks,” said Thomas A. LaVeist, Ph.D., author of ‘Minority Populations and Health: An Introduction to Health Disparities in the United States.’ African-Americans are also more likely than whites to be victims of homicide and HIV/AIDS. Infant mortality is double for blacks. It’s been that way since statistics were kept.”
Black infants suffer greatly from the grim statistics of poor healthcare, with a death rate 2.3 times higher than white infants. They are also four times more likely to die from low birth weight, and 1.8 times more likely to die from sudden infant death syndrome as whites. Black mothers are 2.5 times more likely to forgo prenatal care until the third trimester, or not at all.
According to The World Health Organization, although the United States spends more on healthcare than any industrialized country, it ranks last in the quality of health among 191 member nations. One of the most significant indicators of a population’s health is the infant mortality rate, and the numbers are particularly grave for minority infants in the U.S.
“There is a powerful link between poverty, low socioeconomic status, and HIV,” said Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. “In communities with a generalized epidemic, we need to reach everyone in the community with prevention information and interventions.”
Clearly, the inability to afford healthcare by minorities as well as poor and even middle class white Americans is quickly failing in an economy that is not only costing Americans a loss of jobs, but homes as well.
According to a report from The Kaiser Family Foundation ‘The Effects of the Economic Recession on Communities of Color’ published July 2009, “Minority individuals are disproportionately affected by many of the consequences of the economic recession such as high unemployment rates, increased concern about paying for healthcare coverage, housing, and food.”
The study indicates that a “higher percentage of minority individuals report having issues obtaining a good-paying job and losing work hours, as a result of the economic downturn.”
While some 46 million Americans have no health insurance, a disproportionate number of blacks remain uninsured, and the economic, institutional, and social barriers continue to exist 56 years after the Civil Rights Movement achieved its first monumental strides in 1955.
The late great Martin Luther King said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Let us heed King’s eloquent and timeless words, and do more than just apathetically hope that things will change. We must demand and fight for reform on the forefront of one of America’s most epochal battlegrounds; that all people have the basic right to live healthy, and experience wholeheartedly the country’s most robust principals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
It is a pursuit we can all realize; regardless of our skin color.