the U.S. healthcare system is killing people. It is especially killing non-white women and children

March 13th, 2008 | Discriminatory Health Care In The U.S.

Meanwhile here in the U.S… RH Reality Check has some appalling statistics about the inequities of health care in this country:

* African-American women are nearly four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women, 23 times more likely to be infected with HIV/AIDS and 14 times more likely to die from the disease.
* American-Indian/Alaskan Native women are over 5 times more likely than white women to have chlamydia and over 7 times more likely to contract syphilis.
* The unplanned pregnancy rate among Latinas is twice the national average; and Latinas are much more likely to contract human papillomavirus, the infection that leads to cervical cancer.

and:

* More young African-American females and Latinas than white women are given abstinence-only instruction in school, instead of comprehensive sex education. This means they aren’t taught about contraceptive use to prevent pregnancy or protect against HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Abstinence-only programs have proven ineffective, and in some cases counter-productive, but every year the government has increased their funding dramatically, now totaling $176 million annually.
* Although the U.S. has the resources to reduce maternal deaths and has acknowledged the importance of prenatal care to prevent them, it has adopted policies which force women to delay pregnancy-related care or forego it altogether. Unreasonable requirements for Medicaid like the 5-year bar on benefits for legal residents prevent many immigrant women from receiving even basic services.

Just to be clear–the U.S. healthcare system is killing people. It is especially killing non-white women and children. ...