Minorities have been getting the short end of the stick when it comes to most aspects in society. Health care seems to be no different. Usually referred to as “institutionalized racism” minorities access and quality of health care is a lot worse compared to the access and quality Caucasians.
Minorities are less likely to have health care. (As seen by the chart provided on Monday’s posting). This could be due to economic reasons, minorities are more likely to have low paying jobs and the low paying jobs do not provide health insurance for their workers.
Areas that have a high population of minorities usually be under served. Minority physicians are more likely to practice in minority communities. Yet, because of all of the institutionalized racism in the education system (e.x biases in testing) minorities are usually underrepresented. This leaves the control to white doctors, who usually have their practices in white communities. This causes minority issues to usually be ignored. For example billions of dollars are spent each year on health research bit only a small percentage of those funds are allocated to research on issues of particular importance to women and minorities, and to research by women and minority scientists (21.5% and .37%, respectively).
There are many discriminatory policies that happen when a minority is just being checked in a hospital. They usually have unequal access to emergency care, lack of community care; go to a clinic compared to a hospital or have a deposit requirement (http://academic.udayton.edu/health/07HumanRights/racial01c.htm). An example would be refusing Medicaid patients from treatment at certain hospitals or not providing translators for all of the languages needed. Or the fact that African Americans are less likely to get to get major tests done when complaining of certain symptoms compared to Caucasians.
Nevertheless the statistics speak for themselves. Minorities are more likely to be sick and suffer from a major disease compared to whites. Check out the two websites sited to see the numbers on the likely hood of minorities getting sick.
http://www.omhrc.gov/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=3&lvlid=23
http://www.omhrc.gov/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=3&lvlid=31
Here are some interesting articles to read that expand upon this idea.
Report finds minorities get poorer health care, http://archives.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/03/20/race.healthcare/index.html
Minorities and health care what’s the real story
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francesca-billersafran/minorities-and-health-car_b_275611.html
Sources I used
http://academic.udayton.edu/health/07HumanRights/racial01c.htm
www.omhrc.gov
Questions to consider:
-Do you think the health care system is another example of “White Privilege?” Why or Why not?
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I would say that healthcare is a rather obvious example of white privilege, but it also depends on a number of other factors. The intersection of race and class has a huge impact on who receives healthcare; you have to be able to afford health insurance or work at a company that provides it as a benefit. Since white privilege effects the job market, this translates into the people who are receiving healthcare through employment. The level of education also has an impact on healthcare. Kids in college in most states are required to have health insurance, so if they don't have it independently it is made available through the school. I am not sure at exactly what age you can no longer be on your parents health insurance if you don't go to college, but i would assume its 21.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting thing to think about is how kids right out of college represent a huge number of the uninsured as they are no longer able to be on their parents insurance, and not yet at a job that has healthcare benefits.
Cassidy Freed
It is interesting that even in our health care system we see the separtion between class and race. I think that it is unfortunate that this divide exist considering we are one of the wealthy nations in the world. It is obivous that the health care system is another form of white privalege, the statistics speak for themselves.
ReplyDeleteEmily Zavala
I do not think that healthcare is an example of white priveledge. My family is white and yet we have struggled very much with the healthcare system in that we have not been able to get services we need because of financial problems.I think this is a class issue not a race issue. This makes me think of sociological imagination because I think that this is a private struggle that my family has but at the same time I feel there are many white families and families of all races struggling to pay for healthcare. Especially during this recession I think that white priveledge is not apparent anymore in many families.
ReplyDeleteTaylor