
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 2, 1990                   TAG: 9005020556
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/8   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Medium

DISPARITIES IN HEALTH CARE MUST END, AMA PANEL SAYS

The short shrift that blacks and other racial minorities get from the U.S. health-care system is intolerable and must end, an ethics panel for the American Medical Association said today.

Studies dramatizing the disparities in medical treatment between the races go back decades, but blacks are still getting less-frequent and less-aggressive care, said the AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs.

"Whether the racial disparities in treatment decisions are caused by differences in incomes and education, socio-cultural factors, or failures by the medical profession, they are unjustified and must be eliminated," the council said.

"Not only do the disparities violate fundamental principles of fairness, justice and medical ethics, they may be part of the reason for the poorer quality of health of blacks in the United States."

American blacks have twice the infant mortality rate of whites and a life expectancy six years shorter, the panel said in a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Black men under 45 years have a 45 percent higher rate of lung cancer and 10 times the likelihood of dying from high blood pressure compared with white men in the same age group, the council added.

The panel said many of the disparities also exist for other racial minorities but are less well-documented.

It recommended a triple-barrel approach to improve health care for blacks: greater access, greater awareness and concrete medical guidelines for what is acceptable care.

Ensuring greater access should include requiring employers to provide health insurance to all their workers expanding Medicaid to all Americans below the poverty level, the panel said.

The panel called for a state role in helping the poor obtain health insurance.

Robert J. Blendon, chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard School of Public Health, said the recommendations, most of which the AMA already has made individually, represent "really a step out for an association that has not taken a strong stand on this issue for many years."

by CNB