Praxis Center: America’s healthcare is ripe with ‘structural racism’ and part of ‘global medical apartheid’
Follow the leftist headlines and you will be told that America is a racist country and now the health care system is also to blame.
A new post on Praxis Center by Dr. Michelle Morse highlights how the “New guidelines published by the Trump administration through the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare” impose unfair requirements to seek work. This is; therefore, proof that the system is “unjust” and ripe with structural racism.
“Requiring our citizens to demonstrate engagement in the workforce in order to access healthcare is fundamentally at odds with health care as a human right and is unjust. Medicaid disproportionately serves Black, Latin-x, and Native American people because of the historic and ongoing economic and racial oppression of these groups. An employment requirement would disproportionately threaten the right to healthcare to these communities, who already experience structural racism that negatively affects their health. You do not need a degree in health policy to know that people of color will disproportionately lose Medicaid coverage because of the new employment requirements.”
If you are asking “How,” be satisfied in knowing that is the beginning of Morse’s thesis: “…people of color are uniquely targeted by systems of capitalism, imperialism and colonialism. Without recognizing the depths of our miseducation as health professionals on the true root causes of illness, and how we have often served as agents of structurally racist policies, we will never agree on the solutions needed to correct our current system of global medical apartheid.”
Global medical apartheid?
If this isn’t shocking enough, Morse asserts that hospitals engage in “racial segregation of patients” before twisting and distorting life expectancy data between Roxbury and Back Bay, Massachusetts.
Roxbury has an overall crime rate 79% higher than the national average while Back Bay is an affluent shopping and dining destination.
“The predominantly Black community of Roxbury has a life expectancy of 58.9 years. Compare that to the predominantly white community of Back Bay, with a life expectancy of 91.9 years. Why?” Morse asks, before blaming the health care system.
Maybe it’s the shocking crime in Roxbury NOT participation in the state’s universal health care program(s).
She continues: “The very fact that health care organizations can decide to refuse Medicaid is yet another example of structural racism.”
Morse is not alone with this narrative. From 2017, an article “Physicians who refuse to accept Medicaid patients breach their contract with society”: “The blanket refusal of many physicians to see patients with Medicaid is unjust. It contributes to a health care system of separate but equal based on social class. The medical profession must fix this glaring breach in our contract with society — all physicians should accept Medicaid.”
Got that docs: Take Medicaid or else!
If all of this wasn’t postmodern enough for you, Morse rants about what to do “Our anti-racism work in health care must be intersectional, and explicitly anti-capitalist, anti-misogynist, anti-ableist and anti-heteronormative.”
Yikes.
Praxis Center is far left outlet tied to Kalamazoo College in Michigan, describing itself in this way: “Praxis Center is an online blog and website where short rigorous essays of current relevance are produced each week for teaching and social justice activism. Pertinent auxiliary materials are available on our Resource and Art Pages.”
