Ethnic groups pass over health care in favor of other priorities

While debate surrounding health care reform may lead to a decrease in health disparities that often fall along racial lines, ethnic student groups at this university are focusing on other issues.

Last week, President Barack Obama's visit to the campus brought the health care debate to the university's front door. At Comcast Center, Obama said student involvement was needed in the national push for reform. But a week later, students' attention has moved in other directions, despite local and national pleas for more involvement, especially among the younger generation.

Other than this university's chapter of the NAACP, which dedicated this week's general body meeting to the issues surrounding minorities and health care, most cultural groups are leaving the subject of health care untouched.

"As of now we don't have anything planned," Black Student Union Vice President Kalani Hillman said. "In the future we look forward to doing something with health care. As an organization we have to think about those kinds of things. But a lot of students aren't aware and could be better informed."

But national and university health care experts said student involvement in health care reform is crucial — young people are more likely to get health insurance as adults if they have been aware of the issues from an early age, anthropology professor Tony Whitehead said. This is especially true for low-income minorities, he added.

"Young people have not been as active in the debate in part because they don't suffer from illness, but when you are low-income you have other priorities," said Whitehead, who has been working in the area of community health for more than 40 years. "So you're going to take care of those priorities. For young people, health care only becomes a problem when an emergency happens, and then who's going to pay for it?"

These inequalities can also be tied to financial problems on the national scale.

Since the recession began, nearly four in 10 Latinos have reported having trouble paying for health coverage, compared to more than two in 10 blacks and whites. Many have also lost their health insurance as companies cut jobs and benefits — 25 percent of blacks and 21 percent of Latinos report the loss of health insurance since last year, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study, an organization that focuses on health care issues and policy.

"There's the whole issue of health disadvantages with people of color," Whitehead said. "They suffer at higher rates than that of any other demographic."

In Maryland,18 percent of blacks and 46 percent of Latinos are without health care, according to another Kaiser study.

The foundation found that a higher proportion of blacks and Latinos are either uninsured or covered by Medicaid, a government insurance program that only provides coverage to low-income individuals and families or the disabled primarily because the two groups are also more likely to have low-paying jobs, which are less likely to offer health insurance, and less able to afford independent insurance.

While some of those in the health care field are quick to point out the racial disparities of the health care system, they also say the problem is not going to fade any time soon.

"The whole health care debate is very important," Whitehead said. "It's really sort of a moral issue. It's a major, major problem."

hampton@umdbk.com