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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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Congressman
Elijah E. Cummings |
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(6/1/02 Baltimore AFRO-American Newspaper)
by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings
Inequities within our healthcare system threaten the health and survival of every minority American. That reality convinced former President Clinton to commit this nation to eliminating racially-defined health disparities by the year 2010, a commitment that the Bush Administration has reaffirmed.
To achieve this goal, we must significantly expand access to quality, affordable healthcare. Nearly 20 percent of African Americans and more than 33 percent of Hispanic Americans lack health insurance – rates of non-insurance that are two and three times greater than among Caucasians.
As the prestigious national Institute of Medicine (IOM) confirmed last March, however, minority Americans receive lower quality healthcare than the majority population even when our incomes and access to care are the same.
Confronted by overwhelming scientific evidence that prejudice within our healthcare system is killing Americans every day, President Bush and the Congress have a duty to act
"The Institute of Medicine report cannot be ignored," Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) declared during a congressional hearing that we held this week. "It is not enough to denounce healthcare disparities. We must take steps to eliminate them."
After the IOM’s report was released, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) was the first to respond to my call for congressional action. Last Tuesday, Congressman Mark Souder (R-IN) made our effort to address this life-or-death challenge bipartisan.
Congressman Souder chairs the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources that has jurisdiction over many of the federal agencies that are crucial to protecting minority health. I commend him for agreeing to my request for the opportunity to question healthcare experts and federal health agencies about how the government must respond to the IOM study.
It is worth noting that none of the witnesses who testified at our hearing this week disputed the National Institute of Medicine’s findings – or its recommendations.
The experts agreed, for example, that many healthcare professionals need more effective training to overcome their unconscious racial and ethnic stereotypes and better communicate with their minority patients. There also appears to be support for increasing the number of minority doctors and nurses, providing language translators where needed and expanding the research role of minority institutions of higher learning.
In addition to our support for Medicare-based prescription drug coverage, an effective "patients’ bill of rights" and more-inclusive insurance coverage, the CBC and I have been working to enact most of the IOM’s healthcare recommendations for years. The Institute’s findings and recommendations about minority health disparities in America are welcome support for our cause.
To save American lives, we know that we must also eliminate the substantial differences in health insurance plans that Americans are now offered and can afford -- and we must expand civil rights protections against healthcare discrimination.
Along with the CBC and other supporters, I will continue to support legislative proposals that will address the IOM’s indictment of healthcare in America. We must develop a more fair and effective national healthcare system.
Those of us who serve in the Congress also have a duty to ask the fundamental question about healthcare that the Institute of Medicine was not in a position to resolve. What is the value of a human life?
Protecting every American’s health, as the IOM report challenges us to do, may cost more money in the near term, but I believe that we must make this commitment.
Now, the President and every other Member of Congress must tell Americans of color how much they believe our survival is worth. At this point, the response of the Bush Administration and its Republican congressional allies is less than clear.
The Administration can justifiably share credit for those positive, Clinton-era healthcare initiatives that it has continued. However, as Congresswoman (and medical doctor) Donna Christensen testified during our hearing this week, "None of the programs critical to the elimination of disparities in healthcare have budgets reflective of a serious commitment."
By its "focus on containing costs at the expense of prevention and services," she declared, the Bush Administration’s overall healthcare budget ". . . writes off lives."
My response to Congresswoman Christensen was that federal officials -- including the President – would look at these health issues in a different light if their own family members were involved. For Americans of color, of course, the lives of those we love are at stake in this ongoing national debate about equity in healthcare.
We must prevail. As Congressman Danny Davis (D-IL) observed during our hearing this week, "We have the skill to overcome this threat – if we have the will."
-The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings represents the 7th Congressional District of Maryland in the United States House of Representatives.
