Keywords

Discrepancies

Health, Politics, Race, The Economy

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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