A Call to Action for Healthcare Equality! – Single-Payer Healthcare – Part 27

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Within the first hour of Michael Moore’s movie, 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 had been 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

“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 life expectancy 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, such as that proposed by H.R. 676, 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 else 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, we need to organize for the passage of H.R. 676 with the same fervor and urgency that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Our very lives are on the line!

“Under HR 676, a family of three making $40,000 per year would spend approximately $1,600 per year or about $133 per month for healthcare coverage. Everybody would pay something into the national healthcare fund – on a sliding scale – depending on their income. But they would no longer receive healthcare bills. They would no longer pay co-pays and deductibles; they would no longer be denied preventive care, a doctor of their choice, and care when they need it.”-www.healthcare-now.org