Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.
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A recent survey by the Rockefeller Foundation documents the burden our current health care policies places on blacks.
The survey researchers found that almost one-quarter of blacks do not have health insurance. One-fifth have not gone to the doctor because of the cost, and almost one-tenth have been unable to take a child to the doctor because of the cost. A fifth have not filled a prescription because of the cost. A similar amount have had to take money out of their retirement funds to pay for medical costs.
As Michael Moore has illustrated in his documentary Sicko, the problems faced by Americans with health insurance best illustrate the failures of the system. Many blacks who have health insurance are very worried that their health coverage will not be there or provide enough in their time of need.
The following are some of the specific issues that blacks with coverage are very worried about. One-fifth are very worried about losing their health coverage. Slightly less than a fifth are very worried about being able to pay for co-payments, deductibles and other costs. A quarter of blacks with health insurance are very worried about being able to afford a major hospital stay. Fifteen percent are very worried about being able to pay their health insurance premiums. About a fifth are very worried about being able to afford prescription drugs.
Source: The Rockefeller Foundation, American Worker Survey, Q8c.
About a fifth of blacks with health coverage have worries about their ability to meet their basic health care needs. Worrying about being able to afford adequate health coverage should be the concern of people without health insurance. If we were to include the blacks who were “fairly worried” and “slightly worried” to the totals, it would amount to about half of blacks with health insurance. If people with health coverage do not feel secure about their access to health care, what does that tell us about our health care system?
Contact your elected officials and tell them it is high time that the U.S. joined the Western, developed world and provided health care for all.
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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.
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