Erasing Racial Data Erased Report's Truth
WASHINGTON — Do black Americans receive poorer healthcare than whites?
Two years ago, a National Academy of Sciences panel on which I served concluded that the answer was yes. At the behest of Congress, we had reviewed hundreds of research studies, gathered diverse views and issued a report documenting widespread racial disparity in dispensing medical care.
The Bush administration promised to eliminate this inequity, and federal researchers drew up a report card on "prevailing disparities" in healthcare. This assessment, ordered by Congress and completed last summer, confirmed that racial and socioeconomic disparities were "pervasive in our healthcare system," and that minorities received poorer care and were more likely to die avoidable deaths from cancer, cardiac illness, AIDS, asthma and other diseases.
But this report was never published. In its place, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a cheery rewrite touting administration successes and asserting that claims of minority groups receiving worse care than whites were unproved.
What happened?
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said it was a "mistake." He told a House Ways and Means Committee hearing last week, "Some individuals [in the department] took it upon themselves, that thought they were doing the right thing. They wanted to be more positive
But according to sources in the department and internal correspondence, Thompson twice refused to approve versions containing the findings on racial disparities in healthcare. Senior department officials objected that these findings were "inappropriate and misleading." Rewrites were ordered in July and again last fall, according to these sources.
A side-by-side comparison of the original version, which I've obtained, and the approved report that was released two days before Christmas reveals just how stunning the makeover was. All findings of racial disparities were omitted in the Dec. 23 report. Although conceding that the healthcare Americans receive varies according to race and class, the revised document rejected the "implication" that these differences "result in adverse health outcomes" or "imply moral error
To make its case, the report cherry-picked isolated examples of better medical outcomes among minority groups and sidestepped overwhelming evidence that blacks and Latinos received poorer care. Some of this evidence was downplayed; much more was simply ignored.
