Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Discriminations

Legal Commentary

: Discriminations

Health ?Disparities?

The Black Caucus has warned President Obama that he better express his ?unwavering support? for progressive health care reform in his upcoming speech. According to Politico?s report, the letter from CBC chair Barbara Lee stated

[W]e are deeply concerned about the current discussions surrounding health care reform and the possibility that current components of the bill ? such as a robust public option and myriad health disparity elimination provisions ? may be stricken in order to lower its cost to about $500 billion.

As far as I can tell, ?health disparity elimination? means simply spending money on minority programs. As we have seen, ?disparities? are usually attributed to ?barriers? or ?root causes? that are never identified, and that seems to be true of health disparities as well. I took a quick look to see if there was any consensus on the nature of the ?barriers? or ?root causes? that produced ?health disparities? and found a number of explanations similar to the following from The Health Trust (?Let?s make Silicon Valley the healthiest region in America?):

Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities
Although health disparities have been documented in many populations and communities (i.e., gender, age, ethnicity and race, education, income, social class, disability, geographic location, or sexual orientation), The Health Trust has chosen to focus particularly on reducing racial and ethnic health disparities. Without dismissing the importance of addressing the social, economic and institutional factors that trigger health disparities in all population groups, The Health Trust recognizes that because of the intersection of race and class in the US, people of color are disproportionately impacted by the multiple root causes of health disparities....

Root Causes of Health Disparities
An important feature of health disparities as it is defined in the context of health equity and social justice is that these differences in health that certain populations experience are due to factors beyond individual control. The root causes of health disparities are systemic, institutionalized, and many decades or even centuries in the making. The relationships among the root causes of health disparities are multi-directional and cyclical, exacerbating one another and calling for intervention at every level.

Well, I?m glad we?ve cleared that up.

Full post as published by Discriminations on September 04, 2009 (boomark / email).