A Call to Action for Healthcare Equality!

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare

is the most shocking and inhumane.”

–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare
is the most shocking and inhumane.”

–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

From its inception the field of healthcare in America has treated African-Americans unjustly. Instances such as the Tuskegee experiment point to the inequality of the American healthcare system.  Our country has a long and pervasive history of undeserving and mistreating African-Americans and other marginalized groups. We are seeing this history come to a head in cases such as the February 25th death of the twelve year-old African-American child; Deamonte Driver of Prince George’s County. Driver died because his mother could not find a Medicaid dentist who would see him for his infected tooth. The death of Driver has outraged many in the African-American community but in order to deal with this issue we need to examine the historic racial disparities in the American healthcare system in light of the current fight for single payer healthcare for all citizens.
“Maybe if my husband was a White man….”

Within the first hour of Michael Moore’s SiCKO we see the connection between the fight for Guaranteed Healthcare and the fight against racial disparities in healthcare. In SiCKO we see the story of a white woman whose African-American husband has died because a hospital where she is employed refused to do a bone marrow transplant for him even though a donor was found. In response to this she states to the hospital’s board of directors: “maybe this wouldn’t have happened if my husband was a White man”. This is a question that many African-Americans have to ask themselves on a daily basis. Environmental racism has led to a great amount of inner-city African-American youth being plagued with asthma. African-Americans have higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and high blood-pressure and new research is showing that the high levels of these diseases in the African-American community may be due to the stress of living in a racist society. Across the board we see that African-Americans have suffered greatly under the American healthcare system and with 47 million Americans uninsured, many of them minorities and children the African-American community has to mobilize around the issue of healthcare reform.

Such [free] persons of color as may not be able to pay for Medical
advice . . . [should call at the hospital]. . . . The object of the Faculty
is to collect as many interesting cases, as possible, for the benefit
and instruction of their pupils.

—Medical College of South Carolina advertisement
in the Charleston Courier, November 16, 1837

In our struggle for equality African-Americans have to fight for one of the basic of all human rights and that is the right to be healthy. Our quality of life is affected by a healthcare system that was not created for us, but has used us to benefit others. Since we were seen as three-fifths of a human being during slavery our bodies were used in gruesome experiments by doctors who wanted to perfect their craft at our expense so that they could better serve white society. Harriet A. Washington shines a light on how harmful the American field of healthcare has been to African-Americans in her landmark book:  Medical Apartheid The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.  African-Americans who were enslaved or free but poor were at the mercy of a healthcare system that gave them sub par or even harmful “treatment” (Washington, pg. 1). Today this inequality in healthcare though not as blatant still exists. African-Americans who can not afford the high-cost of private healthcare are given sub par treatment at clinics that are overcrowded, and understaffed if they can even obtain healthcare at all.

“It seems to me that racial disparities come to light as far as
access to different clinics. People of color have clinics that are
not as close and accessible. It is apparent that there are disparities in healthcare towards people of color and some immigrant groups.”
Dee Burton School of Health Sciences Hunter College
and member of Work Group on Health and Racial
Discrimination in New York City CERD Shadow Report

The African-American community has to stand-up and say enough! In the same way that we mobilized for the right to vote we have to mobilize for the right to be healthy. A healthy people are a strong people and a strong people can fight for equality. The life expectancy rate for African-Americans is much lower than that of whites. Healthcare is an issue that can no longer be ignored in our community. A Guaranteed National Health Insurance system for all can ensure that the healthcare system is no longer separate and unequal. Though all American citizens are harmed by our current healthcare system African-Americans are harmed at alarming rates! With a universal single payer healthcare system it can be assured that African-Americans, undocumented immigrants, the poor and everyone in America will receive equal healthcare. Without a dramatic change in our current healthcare system the Medical Apartheid that has categorized America’s healthcare system will continue and more people will die unnecessarily.

As a community of Christian Democrats let’s look to our legacy of civil rights activism as a catalyst to take-up the fight for an equal healthcare!