Cost of racial disparities in health care put at $229 billion between 2003, 2006

September 18, 2009 The Baltimore Sun

Racial health disparities cost the United States $229 billion between 2003 and 2006 - money that could help cover an overhaul of the nation's health care system, according to a new report by Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland researchers.

Minorities are generally sicker and more likely than whites to die of numerous diseases, and until now, medical experts and advocates fighting to close those gaps have made their pleas on moral grounds. But the new figures aim to break down the issue into dollars and cents at a time when everyone is trying to figure out how to rein in soaring health care costs.

"The statistics are just stunning and shocking," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, during an announcement of the findings Thursday. "There is no question that reducing the health disparities can save incredible amounts of money. But more importantly, it saves lives and it makes us a healthier and more prosperous nation."

If the country is serious about reforming health care, policymakers need to find ways to erase these inequalities, said Thomas A. LaVeist, director of the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions and an author of the report.

LaVeist gleaned the figures from data from the government's Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which keeps tabs on how much individuals pay for health care and how healthy they are. He broke down the figures by race and age group to determine how minorities fare compared with whites in different categories.

But others said the study overstates the potential savings. While eliminating health disparities among minorities could certainly save money, figuring out how to do that is the tough part, said Jay Wolvovsky, president and CEO of Baltimore Medical System, whose seven health care centers treat 47,000 people in Baltimore city and county - 74 percent of whom are minorities.

"Calculating the savings does not easily translate into realizing those savings," he said. "To expect that health care reform will provide savings at the full level that is expressed in this study over any short-term basis may be very optimistic."

It's long been known that rates of disease are worse for minorities than for whites. It'sless clear how to fix these gaps. Vietnamese-American women have nearly five times the rate of cervical cancer as white women.

Black men are twice as likely to have prostate canceraswhite men. And Mexican-Americans are nearly twice as likely to have diabetes as whites.

There are disparities in access to care, too, and minorities are typically less likely to have health insurance than whites. But other studies show that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to get quality care they need even when they have coverage, said Brian Smedley, director of the health policy institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank on racial issues which took part in the report's release.