Another Voice / Health
Obama should quickly address disparities in care
Like Barack Obama, my first leadership experience consisted of organizing people stuck in a marginalized and underrepresented area of this country. The new president has spoken eloquently and accurately on the problems plaguing many minority communities. But he knows that it takes more than words to bring about change. That’s why, to fulfill his promise of a new, better America, the number one priority should be to fix the nation’s massive health care disparities as soon as he takes office.
The numbers are staggering. Black children are five times more likely to die from asthma than their white peers. Nearly half of all uninsured Americans are racial minorities.
Black women are more likely to have low birth weight babies, a condition linked to infant mortality. Half of all black Americans suffer from a chronic illness or disability, the highest rate among all racial groups. And blacks have a 30 percent higher death rate from all causes than whites, a disparity that has grown since 1960.
Sick people drain our nation’s esteem, employers and economy. Public hospitals, for instance, admit more minority patients than whites for conditions that would be cheaper and less urgent if they were instead treated by a primary care doctor.
The first step in correcting these disparities is to connect uninsured patients to the health insurance programs already available to them. Twelve million Americans who qualify for Medicaid and SCHIP simply haven’t signed up. Seventy five percent of the nation’s uninsured children are eligible for one of those two programs. And roughly 5 million uninsured Americans qualify for health insurance through their employer but haven’t enrolled.
Policy leaders also must work to reduce the number of emergency room visits. Too often, hospitals are stuck with payment defaults from uninsured patients. This hurts everyone.
The number of emergency hospital visits can be reduced by getting minority patients better access to primary care. A well-trained primary care doctor plays an essential role in preventing and detecting disease. Uniform, personalized care would be a welcome substitute to the hodgepodge treatment from multiple health care providers minorities tend to get stuck with.
Expanded insurance coverage plays a big role in this, as reliable primary care will still be out of reach for many minorities if they have to bear the full cost of treatment on their own.
The government should also finance additional research into health care disparities. Solutions are cheaper and more effective when the specifics of a problem are well understood.
In a country founded on equality, there should not be such great divides in access to quality health care. Here’s hoping the Obama administration moves quickly to address this problem.
Clayola Brown is president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and an international vice president and civil rights director for Unite Here.
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