The race-based inequalities in health insurance and health outcomes

much of my research focuses on health insurance coverage who has coverage how it's changed over time and how to continue to make progress and rates of uninsurance vary significantly by race prior to implementation of the Affordable Care Act nearly one in three Hispanic people and nearly one in five black people were uninsured compared to about 1 in 8 whites but the ACA has helped to close this racial gap since the ACA s core coverage provisions came online in 2014

rates of uninsurance across all racial groups have fallen dramatically with the biggest gains among black and hispanic people at the same time there is still significant work to do today 30 million people still remain uninsured and about half of them are people of color one of the specific reasons that people of color are disproportionately likely to be uninsured today has to do with the fact that 14 states have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act more than 90 percent of the people who were locked out of

coverage because of their state's refusal to expand Medicaid live in the south and indeed some of the states with the biggest black populations are those that have not expanded Medicaid under the ACA so bringing Medicaid expansion to the remaining states and taking other steps that continue to move towards universal coverage will reduce racial disparities but of course just as there are racial disparities in access to health insurance there are also racial disparities and health outcomes and some of the most shocking statistics have to do with infant and maternal mortality in the

u.s. white babies die before their first birthday at a rate of 4.9 per 1000 when women die from pregnancy and childbirth related causes at a rate of 13 per 100,000 those numbers are shocking and scary and they are far higher than other rich countries but for black babies and black moms the picture is far worse black babies die at a rate of 11.4 per 1000 more than one percent black moms die at a rate of 42.8 per 100,000 those

numbers are more than double and more than triple the rate of whites respectively and no one really knows why try to imagine what would happen if white moms and white babies were dying at the rate of black moms and black babies what conversations would policymakers be having what scientific research would we be funding how would doctors be treating their patients differently all of us policymakers scientists physicians should be asking ourselves what more we can do to give this issue the attention

it deserves