SEIU Healthcare members witness injustice in healthcare every day. As doctors and nurses, LPNs and lab technicians, and nursing home and home care workers across the country, they see disparate access to care and worse, sometimes fatal outcomes simply because of the color of a person’s skin, where they live, how much money they have, their job, or how they choose to express their gender identity. This just isn’t right.
At SEIU Healthcare we stand with all communities for health equity. We stand for health justice.
Communities of color continue to experience so many hurdles when it comes to accessing quality, affordable healthcare. For so many families, healthcare is out of reach. As a result, millions of people still experience glaring and pervasive health and healthcare disparities.
It is unacceptable that right here in the U.S. systemic healthcare disparities continue to result in higher rates of chronic diseases, shorter life spans and an overall lower quality of life for millions of African Americans, Latinos, Asian and Pacific Islanders and Native Americans –even among those who are insured.
That’s why SEIU Healthcare members, healthcare advocates and organizations continue standing up to protect the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and Medicare, some of our tools to correct inhumane injustice, at every turn–and now as we enter federal budget negotiations.
Thankfully, the Affordable Care Act is already at work, delivering much-needed benefits to communities of color. For example:
- Nearly 3 million Latinos and 3 million African Americans will gain healthcare coverage under expanded Medicaid coverage to poor and working adults.
- More than 2.5 million young adults have gained coverage because of the new health care law, including 736,000 Latinos.
- By 2016, 3 million African Americans who would otherwise be uninsured will gain coverage through Medicaid expansion eligibility; another 3.8 million will be able to purchase lower-cost health plans through the creation of Affordable Insurance Exchanges.
- Already, 6.1 million Latinos now have coverage for preventive services without additional cost sharing under the Affordable Care Act. In addition, 4.5 million elderly and disabled African Americans who receive health coverage from Medicare now also have access to an expanded list of preventive services with no cost-sharing. These services include annual wellness visits and personalized prevention plans, and access important screenings such as diabetes and colorectal cancer screenings, bone mass measurement, and mammograms.
- The healthcare law invested $11 billion over five years to expand community health center programs. Nearly 26 percent of patients served by community health centers in 2010 were African American; 35 percent of those patients in 2009 were Latino. The law increases the funding available to the more than 1,100 community health centers.
- Several initiatives will increase investments in programs like the National Health Service Corps, a network of primary care providers serving communities with significant medical, dental, or mental/behavioral health need, to help diversify the healthcare workforce and strengthen cultural competency.
SEIU Healthcare believes that every man, woman, and child deserves the justice and human dignity of living a healthy life. As members of Congress prepare to negotiate the federal budget, let’s remember that it’s up to each of us to fight for the social and economic investments that end health disparities once and for all.