Black Americans Deserve More Health Care Options, Not Less

When top Black scientists and physicians gathered on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in San Francisco, they saw a problem as big as the pandemic for Black health care.  This pandemic could take out hospitals, leaving already underserved communities in disastrous conditions. The Journal of Black Innovation National Black Business Month reported in its January edition that the 450 Black-serving hospitals identified by CMS records are facing the same issues as Downstate Medical and One Brooklyn in New York City–severe funding deficits left as a result of COVID-19 caseloads that were the heaviest in the nation.  In many cases, those hospitals were designated to treat only COVID patients during the worst stretch of the pandemic, reducing their income dramatically from other procedures and patients. Dr. Bruce Ovbiagele, Professor of Neurology and Associate Dean of University of California-San Francisco and editor in chief of the Journal of the American Heart Association, laid out the conditions in the “stroke belt,” an area stretching across the South that roughly corresponds with the counties with the largest numbers of slaves in 1860.  He noted that medical facilities in those areas were less likely to have staff and facilities to treat strokes. John William...