• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

PNHP

  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Local Chapters
    • Students for a National Health Program
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
      • Policy Details
      • FAQs
      • History of Health Reform
      • Información en Español
    • How do we pay for it?
    • Physicians’ Proposal
      • Full Proposal
      • Supplemental Materials
      • Media Coverage
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
  • Take Action
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
    • Organizing in Red Districts
  • Heal Medicare
    • HealMedicare.org
    • Sign our Petition
    • Take our Survey
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Stop REACH
  • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Maternal Mortality
    • Mental Health Care
    • Health Care Voters Guide
    • COVID-19 Endangers Health Workers
    • COVID-19 Exacerbates Racial Inequities
    • Public Health Emergencies
    • Rural Health Care
    • Racial Health Inequities
    • Surprise Billing
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Medicare Advantage harms report
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Member Resources
    • 2024 Annual Meeting Materials
    • Member Interest Groups (MIGs)
    • Newsletter
    • Slideshows
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
      • Why we Need Medicare for All
      • PNHP’s 8-point plan
      • New Study: Perils and Possibilities
      • Emergency COVID-19 Legislation
      • Kitchen Table Toolkit
      • Take Action on COVID-19
      • Telling your COVID-19 story
      • PNHP members in the news
    • Events Calendar
    • Webinars
    • Film Room
    • Join or renew your membership
  • Home
  • Contact PNHP
  • Join PNHP
  • Donate
  • PNHP Store

Articles of Interest

As aspiring doctors, we see the racial toll of poor health insurance

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

By Scott Goldberg
Chicago Sun-Times, December 23, 2014

On December 10, medical students at more than 70 schools across the country held “white coat die-ins” in response to the lack of indictments in the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York.

Here in Chicago, I and more than 100 students from Rosalind Franklin University, Northwestern, Rush, the University of Chicago, and University of Illinois at Chicago lay down together in protest on the campus of UIC. It was a moving experience.

Why did we do this? Like many Americans, we are angered by the repression and injustice that affects communities of color. Yet we are not outside observers to these systematic injustices.

Every day, we see the toll inequality has on the lives and health of our African Americans, Latinos, and other nonwhite patients. If we do not speak out on behalf of our patients, then we are not living up to the standards set by our profession.

In an important journal article from 2005, former Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher and co-authors demonstrated that while overall survival for both African American and white populations has improved over the last 40 years, there has been little improvement in the mortality gap between blacks and whites. In fact, this “death gap” worsened for black infants and black men age 35 and older.

What this means is that in 2002, blacks suffered 40.5 percent more deaths — 83,570 excess deaths — than would be expected if they had experienced the mortality rate of whites. This is a shocking statistic for a country with the greatest wealth and resources ever seen in human history.

While there a number of reasons why this racial disparity exists, the lack of universal health insurance coverage is an obvious one. Importantly, it’s a fixable problem.

Every other industrialized country in the world has some form of public health insurance. Many countries, like Canada, have a single-payer system whereby the government funds the private delivery of health care. In Canada, everyone is guaranteed care, medical outcomes are as good if not better than in the U.S., and yet per capita health spending is about two-thirds what we spend.

Our own extremely popular Medicare program, whose 50th anniversary will be observed in the new year, resembles a single-payer system in many ways. For those who qualify, Medicare provides ready and equitable access to care, free choice of doctor and hospital, and a minimum of wasteful paperwork.

As long as private health insurance companies remain in our health care system, there were will be steep financial barriers to people of color and all people with lower to middle incomes getting access to medically necessary, life-saving care. A Medicare-for-All system, without co-pays or deductibles, would eliminate these barriers, save money and improve health.

Regrettably, the Affordable Care Act does not come close to removing these barriers to care. Nearly 31 million people will remain uninsured even after full implementation of the law, and millions more will have skimpy health insurance policies that will leave them vulnerable to financial distress in the event of illness.

As a medical student and future physician, I believe access to high-quality health care is a right of all people and should be provided as a public service rather than bought and sold as a commodity. Until this becomes a reality, the death gap between blacks and whites will continue to afflict us.

This state of affairs is unacceptable. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once remarked, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.” We shouldn’t settle for it. We need an improved Medicare for All.

Scott Goldberg is a third-year medical student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.

http://chicago.suntimes.com/other-views/7/71/229384/aspiring-doctors-see-racial-toll-poor-health-insurance

Primary Sidebar

Recent Articles of Interest

  • UnitedHealth Has 2,694 Subsidiaries and Affiliates. Is It Too Big to Manage?
  • Atlanta doctors: We can’t let Washington gut Medicaid
  • How To Make America Sick
  • The Case for Universal Healthcare with Dr. Diljeet Singh
  • Proposed Medicaid cuts could lead to thousands of deaths, study finds
  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Local Chapters
    • Students for a National Health Program
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
      • Policy Details
      • FAQs
      • History of Health Reform
      • Información en Español
    • How do we pay for it?
    • Physicians’ Proposal
      • Full Proposal
      • Supplemental Materials
      • Media Coverage
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
  • Take Action
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
    • Organizing in Red Districts
  • Heal Medicare
    • HealMedicare.org
    • Sign our Petition
    • Take our Survey
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Stop REACH
  • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Maternal Mortality
    • Mental Health Care
    • Health Care Voters Guide
    • COVID-19 Endangers Health Workers
    • COVID-19 Exacerbates Racial Inequities
    • Public Health Emergencies
    • Rural Health Care
    • Racial Health Inequities
    • Surprise Billing
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Medicare Advantage harms report
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Member Resources
    • 2024 Annual Meeting Materials
    • Member Interest Groups (MIGs)
    • Newsletter
    • Slideshows
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
      • Why we Need Medicare for All
      • PNHP’s 8-point plan
      • New Study: Perils and Possibilities
      • Emergency COVID-19 Legislation
      • Kitchen Table Toolkit
      • Take Action on COVID-19
      • Telling your COVID-19 story
      • PNHP members in the news
    • Events Calendar
    • Webinars
    • Film Room
    • Join or renew your membership

Footer

  • About PNHP
    • Mission Statement
    • Board of Directors
    • National Office Staff
    • Speakers Bureau
    • Local Chapters
    • Students for a National Health Program
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
  • About Single Payer
    • What is Single Payer?
      • Policy Details
      • FAQs
      • History of Health Reform
      • Información en Español
    • How do we pay for it?
    • Physicians’ Proposal
      • Full Proposal
      • Supplemental Materials
      • Media Coverage
    • The Medicare for All Act of 2025
  • Take Action
    • Moral Injury and Distress
    • Medical Society Resolutions
    • Recruit Colleagues
    • Schedule a Grand Rounds
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Lobby Visits
    • Organizing in Red Districts
  • Heal Medicare
    • HealMedicare.org
    • Sign our Petition
    • Take our Survey
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Stop REACH
  • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • Medicare Disadvantage
    • Maternal Mortality
    • Mental Health Care
    • Health Care Voters Guide
    • COVID-19 Endangers Health Workers
    • COVID-19 Exacerbates Racial Inequities
    • Public Health Emergencies
    • Rural Health Care
    • Racial Health Inequities
    • Surprise Billing
  • Latest News
    • Sign up for e-alerts
    • Medicare Advantage harms report
    • Members in the news
    • Health Justice Monitor
    • Articles of Interest
    • Latest Research
    • For the Press
  • Member Resources
    • 2024 Annual Meeting Materials
    • Member Interest Groups (MIGs)
    • Newsletter
    • Slideshows
    • Materials & Handouts
    • Kitchen Table Campaign
    • COVID-19 Response
      • Why we Need Medicare for All
      • PNHP’s 8-point plan
      • New Study: Perils and Possibilities
      • Emergency COVID-19 Legislation
      • Kitchen Table Toolkit
      • Take Action on COVID-19
      • Telling your COVID-19 story
      • PNHP members in the news
    • Events Calendar
    • Webinars
    • Film Room
    • Join or renew your membership
©2025 PNHP