health equity
Robert Preidt, HealthDay News, July 11
Each year about 7,000 children in the United States experience cardiac arrest outside of a hospital. A new study finds that these kids are 41% less likely to get life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation if they’re black and living in a poor neighborhood. In fact, these kids were much less likely to receive CPR from a bystander than white children living in any type of neighborhood, the research showed.
health care policy
Jan Hoffman, The New York Times, July 3
How many undocumented immigrants need health coverage in the United States? How much would it cost? Here’s what health care for unauthorized immigrants looks like now, and what providing comprehensive coverage to them might involve.
Mattie Quinn, Governing, July 11
California is restoring the individual mandate and making an unprecedented effort to help the middle class afford health insurance. Starting next year, Californians who go uninsured will owe the state $695 come tax time, or 2 percent of their household income. Currently, only New Jersey and the District of Columbia have passed their own individual mandates. California is also making Affordable Care Act subsidies available to residents who make up to six times the federal poverty line, which means $75,000 for an individual and $154,500 for a family of four.
affordability
Rising health insurance deductibles fuel middle-class anger and resentment
Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times, July 17
Health insurance has long divided Americans, providing generous benefits to some and slim-to-no protections to others. High deductibles, which have more than tripled in the last decade, have worsened inequality, fueling anger and resentment, especially among the working middle class. While the wealthy can weather the higher costs, and the government provides help to those on Medicaid, the middle class is left with health care they can’t afford.
first person
Armen Henderson, The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 14
If white people were under-treated for pain at the same rate black people are today, institutions and individuals would be swiftly held accountable. If the maternal mortality of white women was the same as it is for black women it would have become a national emergency years earlier. Dr. Armen Henderson has found that the systemic racism found in criminal justice has parallels in medicine. While criminal justice has harsh sentencing and disproportionately high incarceration rates, health care has numerous disparities in morbidity and mortality among black and brown patients.