title: American medicine and the politics of race.
abstract: Straw men play a major role in the debate over racial disparity in American medicine. Most have been deployed by the disparities-denying right, but progressives intent on "outing" racism have sent forth their share. This essay flushes out the straw men while attempting to understand the competing moral premises that drive the politics of health care disparity. At bottom, arguments about the scope of disparity and discrimination in medical care are disputes about the appropriate scope of personal responsibility for life circumstances. Further research into the factors that correlate with racial differences in health care can shed light on the circumstances that bring about these differences. Whether these circumstances, once understood, should be deemed acceptable is a moral and political matter, and sharp differences over the scope of personal and public responsibility for these circumstances are inevitable. Such disagreements, however, distract us from efforts to reach common ground solutions to agreed-upon inequities in health care.
authors.affiliation: Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20001, USA. bloche@law.georgetown.edu
authors.forename: M Gregg
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Bloche
mesh_terms: D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D006079:Government Publications as Topic; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000191:economics; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D009013:Morale; D015969:National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, U.S., Health and Medicine Division; D010820:Physicians / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011057:Politics; D011287:Prejudice; D044469:Racial Groups; D012107:Research Design; D014481:United States