John Conyers: “in 2002, the Institute of Medicine released a telling report entitled: Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic…”

“in 2002, the Institute of Medicine released a telling report entitled: Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. The report documented many troubling findings which unfortunately, health experts in the underserved communities have been crying out about for decades. It documents the case that the American health care system was set up so that African Americans, Hispanics, and other underserved minorities would receive "second class back of the bus health care" in public hospitals and community clinic--many of which are on the verge of economic collapse. Minority Americans are at least twice as likely as white Americans to be uninsured. More than 30 percent of Latinos and 20 percent of African Americans do not have health insurance--and the gap has been widening over the last decade. Astoundingly, minorities now account for two thirds of the new AIDS cases, and HIV infection is the leading cause of death among younger African Americans. Yet, African Americans are 41 percent-73 percent less likely than whites to receive particular drug therapies. African American women are far less likely to receive a mammogram than white women and are at far greater risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer. Black men are also 1.5 times more likely to develop prostate cancer than white men, and they are three times more likely to die of the disease. Even more disturbing, African American children are plagued by asthma.”