( NNPA) – If there is any population where it is vital not only that healthcare costs be lowered, but access to quality healthcare be improved, experts agree, it’s the African-American community. President Obama knows the need firsthand from his former days as a community organizer on the streets of Southside Chicago, and First Lady Michelle Obama’s work as a hospital administrator there.
“Over the past several years the costs of healthcare have increased dramatically,” then Sen. Obama, running in the general election for president last fall, told the Black Press in a teleconference. “The average premium has gone up by 100 percent; the average deductible has gone up 30 percent just this year. But obviously the African-American community continues to have poor health and receive lower quality healthcare than other Americans, more likely to be uninsured; the death rate from cancer is one-third higher for African-Americans than it is for whites; the community suffers from a higher rate of chronic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes.”
Then Sen. Obama continued in the 2008 conference, “Healthcare is universally important, and we’ve got to do something about it … But it is especially important in the African-American community.”
That’s why Obama’s White House reached out to the Black Press last week in an effort to emphasize “the importance of lowering healthcare costs and the long-term impacts on the African-American community.”
According to Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform – the office that “coordinates the development of the Administration’s policy agenda …concerning the provision of high-quality, affordable, and accessible health care and slowing the growth of health costs” – the president knows that “reducing costs is particularly important for the African-American community because on average, they spend a higher percentage of their income on healthcare costs (16.5 percent) compared to their white counterparts (12 percent).”
“And despite spending more of their income on medical care, African-Americans continue to face disparities in terms of the [quality of care] that they get,” DeParle told Black reporters during the May 14 White House teleconference. “Those [disparities] are brought about because [Blacks] tend to visit hospitals that provide lower quality care, which, of course, is directly attributable to the lack of financial resources for the hospital.”
DeParle continued, “So we know that there is a special problem in predominately African-American communities, where Medicaid reimbursements are lower, charity cases are higher and healthcare providers may find it more difficult to maintain a practice … We want to make sure that controlling spending is about more than just saving money. It’s also got to be about ensuring that we provide the best patient-centered healthcare system that promotes health and prevents illness.”
The administration, through the U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services, will be making concentrated efforts to minimize the disparities in care and treatment,” Ms. DeParle added. Hospitals that serve low-wealth communities of color will be worked with to improve their standards of care.
Obama has made it clear that the key to solving the nation’s long-term economic problems is lowering spiraling healthcare costs to consumers. Democratic leaders in Congress have pledged to have healthcare reform legislation completed, and on the president’s desk, before lawmakers break for summer recess in August.
“Our broken healthcare system is unsustainable for our families and our businesses, and our government itself,” DeParle said. “Nearly 46 million Americans don’t have any health insurance at all. We know that there are millions of families that are struggling to pay skyrocketing premiums, and businesses are sacrificing growth and innovation to cover healthcare costs.”
“The issue of [rising] healthcare costs is especially troubling in the African-American community, where African-Americans suffer from higher percentages of chronic diseases such as heart disease, kidney disease and diabetes, that are due in part to a lack of access to quality care.”
DeParle recounted how she met a black newspaper owner in Greensboro, NC who was struggling to keep providing health insurance for his employees amidst mounting costs.
“He was telling me that if something doesn’t happen soon, he’s going to have to lay people off, which is obviously the last thing that people want,” DeParle said.
President Obama met with healthcare industry leaders last week, reportedly gaining their commitment to reduce the annual healthcare spending growth by an average 1.5 percent a year for the next ten years. DeParle said that doesn’t sound like a lot, except that costs were originally expected to grow six to seven percent a year over the next decade.
“If they are able to do that…we can save our country, American families and businesses more than $2 trillion…which we estimate to about $2,500 per family, which is something the president really cares about,” DeParle noted.
In fall 2008, Obama, then a Democratic presidential candidate, told black reporters via teleconference call that beyond lower healthcare costs through modernizing electronic medical records and billing to reduce bureaucracy, if elected, he would also push for targeted prevention measures in the African-American community.
“The emphasis on prevention will include addressing disparities. That means we’ll make sure that AIDS education programs are in the communities where we’ve seen the highest growth in AIDS. We’re making sure that there are regular screenings for things like prostate cancer and breast cancer that occur at higher rates in the African-American community. That all of those [prevention efforts] are adequately funded on the front end so that we can save money on the back end.”
Six months later, there have been “general” discussions with President Obama about ways to emphasize prevention of chronic ailments in the Black community, DeParle told the Carolinian/Wilmington Journal newspapers. In the $787 billion stimulus package that the president signed into law in February, $1 billion was designated to fund prevention efforts and public health campaigns across the states.
More than $2 billion was allotted to the National Institutes of Health for further research into chronic diseases, “making sure that that research is something that looks at not just the White community, but the African-American community,” vowed DeParle.
“That will be part of what we will make sure happened with that. …The problem of costs and access in the African-American community is something that this president cares a lot about,” Obama’s healthcare reform adviser added, “and that we will be working closely with the Congress to make sure is addressed as part of healthcare reform.”