Discrepancies
Nathan Newman asks why the Republicans aren’t planning on fixing racial differences in health care, when they have so recently been willing to exploit those differences for political gain. He then goes on to highlight some of the most shocking discrepancies:
Sixty-nine percent of whites are insured through their employers, compared with only 52 percent of blacks and 44 percent of Hispanics. African Americans and Hispanic Americans are far more likely to rely on hospitals or clinics for their usual source of care than are white Americans. The higher the percentage of blacks in a community, the more likely the hospital is to close. Of the more than 200 hospitals in black communities in the 1930s, only 12 were still operating in 1991. Among preschool children hospitalized for asthma, only 7 percent of black and 2 percent of Hispanic children, compared with 21 percent of white children, are prescribed routine medications to prevent future asthma-related hospitalizations. Whites are two to three times more likely to receive a kidney transplant than non-whites, and three times more likely to undergo bypass surgery.
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Comments
Robert,
You ask why I see the use of statistics regarding shorter life expectancy as exploitative.
These statistics were cited in the context of social security reform - justifying private accounts by claiming that it was unfair to African Americans because they tend not to live as long as whites.
First of all, this is simply incorrect. While it is true that African Americans overall have a shorter life expectancy, this is largely because many black men die young. If you compare for those who survive early adulthood and have a productive career in the work force (putting money into the social security system), the differences largely disappear.
Secondly, to the extent that there are differences in mortality for adult African Americans, I would not considered if exploitative if they had used this statistic to reform the medical care system (even offering privatization as a solution, although I would disagree with that). However, this is not what they did. Instead, they ignored the medical problem and used the statistics to justify privatizing the social security system.
They never argued that we should “scrap the system and let people keep more of their own money” with reference to the medical system - only the social security system. To do that and not demand changes to the medical system as well seems exploitative. It seems that they don’t really care about these differences in mortality, they just find them useful for advancing their economic agenda.
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
Kerim,
Why do you characterize the pointing out of facts as “exploitation”?
The realities of health statistics for poor people are what they are. The answer is not to gin up a broken system, but to scrap the system and let people keep more of their own money.
Don’t you think?