Posted on 06/28/2009 3:48:02 AM PDT by Libloather
Healthcare reform important to Blacks
By: Brian D. Smedley, NNPA Guest Commentary
Posted: Monday, June 22, 2009 12:00 pm
Health inequities are deep, persistent, and not new. From the cradle to the grave, racial and ethnic minorities suffer from shorter life spans, higher rates of disease and disability, and higher mortality relative to national averages.
These problems have plagued generations of African Americans and other people of color in the United States. Yet these issues have historically received scant attention in Washington - until now.
Both Congress and the Obama Administration are ramping up efforts to improve health and health care for racial and ethnic minorities and others who face barriers to good health.
On Tuesday, June 9, the Congressional Tri-Caucus (composed of the Congressional Black, Hispanic, and Asian and Pacific Islander Caucuses) introduced the Health Equity and Accountability Act of 2009, a sweeping bill that would address an array of issues ranging from the poor distribution of primary care services in communities of color to the lack of diversity among health professionals. And on the same day, the White House, led by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, convened an historic meeting of health equity activists, scholars, and health care providers to discuss strategies to reduce health inequities and improve the health of all racial and ethnic groups.
Why the focus on health inequality? One, the new political landscape-driven by a president who clearly understands how and why racial inequality has been a difficult conversation in the United States-favors tackling these challenges in the context of major healthcare reform legislation being considered by Congress.
Second, persistent leadership from some members of Congress, such as CBC Health Braintrust Chair Congresswoman Donna Christensen, is beginning to pay off as more members of Congress recognize the importance of eliminating health inequality. Christensen, a physician representing the Virgin Islands, seeks to ensure that any healthcare legislation emerging from Congress addresses the needs of communities of color.
Third, it is becoming clear that any serious effort to expand health insurance coverage, improve the quality of health care, and contain health care costs-Congress' stated goals for health reform-must address health inequities.
This is because these problems are often exacerbated among racial and ethnic minorities: people of color not only are disproportionately uninsured and underinsured (despite the presence of full-time workers in the vast majority of their families), they are also more likely than whites to suffer from poor quality care and face high healthcare expenses.
People of color are therefore the "canaries in the coal mine" of healthcare reform, offering a clear signal of how distressed U.S. healthcare systems are.
Finally, to the extent that some groups, such as racial and ethnic minorities, face a greater burden of illness and disability, the U.S. economy will suffer.
Given the tremendous economicchallenges facing the nation, many in Congress and the Administration understand that we cannot afford to allow African Americans and other people of color-currently one-third of the population-to suffer from the kind of poor health that contributesto their economic marginalization.
It's essential to reap the benefit of the talents, skills, and capacity for hard work of all Americans. To fail to do so would continue to drag the U.S. economy down.
And given that one in every two people living in the United States will be a person of color by the year 2042, it's clear that inaction to address health inequality is inexcusable.
What's needed now is for Congress and the Administration to hear-loudly and clearly-that the American people want health reform to have a significant focus on the needs of communities of color. Public policies, even much-needed ones, arerarely enacted into law without a significant push from the grassroots. The nation's health-and economy-depend on it.
I do not believe it is a lack health care but a lack of good health care choices. Free health care has been available to minorities for several years.
I worked hard and PAY for my families healthcare.
I am not too interested in paying for others healthcare.
Get off your lazy ass and get it your own self.
Socialism is garbage.
Do those higher rates of disease include HIV??? And you get that how??
People of African ancestry have lower life expectancies no matter where they live. This goes for European countries where they already have the wonders of “free” healthcare.
It’s a genetic thing.
These problems have plagued generations of African Americans and other people of color in the United States. Yet these issues have historically received scant attention in Washington - until now.
Damn honkies! If we could just get rid of whitey the world would be uptopia...
The Democrats have kept them in economic slavery, by giving them money. Without incentive to go out and improve their life things do not change. Old saying in life “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man fish and he can feed himself for a lifetime.” They have permanently enslaved an ethnic population with welfare.
Not by lack of INSURANCE or health care.
Smoking rates in the black community are about the same, if slightly higher than in US Caucasians, but blacks appear to have a higher susceptibility to lung cancer. Other than avoiding tobacco and radon, we don't have any known ‘preventative’ measures for lung cancer, so this is not a health care access issue.
Hypertension is substantially more common in blacks than whites in the US, and contributes significantly to health outcomes differences. The rates of hypertension in US blacks is higher than African and Caribbean blacks, and is partially attributable to obesity, but other factors certainly contribute as well. This is partially a ‘health care’ issue in that diagnosis and treatment of hypertension can be effective in preventing morbidity and mortality. The best way to handle this, in my opinion, is to have aggressive community-wide education programs and blood pressure screening programs, not depend on individual visits to physicians. Also, you won't get a handle on this problem without addressing the obesity problem.
I find it very offensive when health disparity data is used to ‘race bait’.
.. lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease..
Free health care has been available to minorities for several years.
Your correct. All they had to do was show up at the hospital.
Now they will have to pay for it, one way or the other.
Spot on, for sure.
Sex deviates, crack users, etc. think we should foot the medical bills for them that are self-inflicted medical problems due to their BEHAVIOR AND LIFESTYLE CHOICES, and if you are a driver who has dozens of traffic violation tickets and car accidents, you pay more for auto insurance, too, but that Bailout will come in the future, I'm sure, for those who can't get auto insurance on their Escalades.
All this crap taxpayers are forced to pay for OTHERS' LACK of RESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR is from the same mentality that elected a non-native born minority to the White House, because they "felt better" to do so.
Racism is what they call it when you point out the obvious reality of which minority is the leader in crime, living off handouts of other peoples' money, has a 70%+ illegitimacy rate of births, is a fourth-generation-family welfare reciever, etc., and costing self-sufficient, responsible people who take care of their own expenses, and I'm damned tired of being forced to pay for recklessness and irresponsibility of them.
While health inequities may be a contributor to the above statistics,I think it disingenuous that the writer neglects other facts such as high crime rate, high drug usage, higher percentage of the group living in LARGE Urban democratic controlled cities
Simply said if you don't take care of "yo sef" yo gonna die sooner than later.
The end game of affirmative action.Whites will die waiting
for health care procedures in Dear Leader’s health care plans!
12% of the population is black.....They carry aids to the tune of 50%....Can you say BEHAVIOR!!!
Whitey’s fault - Noted and added to the reparation$ bill.
Besides AIDS and obesity, blacks have a high incidence of lead poisonisng, usually .38 or 9mm.
The lead poisoning is usually kids...living in older homes with lead paint. A friend of mine who is a chemist said that a piece of “leaded” paint the size of your thumb nail will induce the poisoning process.
Between 2005 and 2006, life expectancy increased 0.4 year for the black population to 73.2 years. Life expectancy for the white population increased 0.3 year to 78.2 years. The difference in life expectancy between the white and black populations in 2006 was 5.0 years, a 0.1-year decrease from the 2005 gap between the two races and the smallest gap ever recorded. The white-black gap has been narrowing gradually from a peak of 7.1 years in 1989 to the current record low.
Black females live longer than white males.Among the major race-sex groups (Tables 7, 8, and Figure 5), white females continued to have the highest life expectancy at birth (80.6 years), followed by black females (76.5 years), white males (75.7 years), and black males (69.7 years). Life expectancies increased by 0.4 year for both the black male and black female populations.
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