It’s Black History Month, so we’re taking the time each week this February to focus on the racial disparities that exist in our current, broken health care system. And nowhere were these disparities more evident than during the Covid-19 pandemic. This week, we’re looking at the racial differences in rates of Covid-19 infection, hospitalization, deaths, and more in the United States.
Similar to maternal mortality (which we covered last week), Black patients have experienced worse health outcomes in relation to Covid-19 than their white counterparts.
While the gaps have narrowed since the pandemic began in 2019, overall, Black people have experienced higher rates of Covid-19 infection and death than white people.1
Disparities were worse during the early stages of the pandemic, with Indigenous, Black, and Hispanic people almost 3 times more likely to contract, be hospitalized, and die from Covid-19.2 Throughout the pandemic, people of color were also more likely to die at younger ages than white adults, “resulting in substantial racial disparities in premature death and years of life lost.”3
What contributes to this? BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) in the U.S. are more likely than white people to:
All of this, along with racial biases in our health care system and factors like the Public Health Emergency expiration and loss of Medicaid coverage for nearly 17 million people nationwide, fueled these gaps.6
While our current, broken health care system undoubtedly contributed to these disparities in the Covid-19 pandemic, we could better prevent this in the future through Medicare for All.
Medicare for All would establish a single-payer health care system that guarantees care for everyone in the U.S., eliminate financial barriers to care, and provide additional funding, protections, and support for historically medically underserved areas. If we’re going to address these stark pandemic-related health outcomes in the future, we need to pass Medicare for All.
Thanks for everything you do to spread the word and build support for our nationwide movement for health care equity and justice.
In solidarity,
Nurses’ Campaign to Win Medicare for All
Sources:
1. “COVID-19 Cases and Deaths, Vaccinations, and Treatments by Race/Ethnicity as of Fall 2022,” Nambi Ndugga, Latoya Hill, and Samantha Artiga, KFF, November 17, 2022
https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/covid-19-cases-and-deaths-vaccinations-and-treatments-by-race-ethnicity-as-of-fall-2022/
2. “COVID-19 Vaccination among American Indian and Alaska Native People,” Latoya Hill and Samantha Artiga, KFF, April 9, 2021
https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/covid-19-vaccination-american-indian-alaska-native-people/
3. “During the COVID-19 Pandemic, People of Color Were More Likely to Die at Younger Ages,” KFF, April 24, 2023
https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/press-release/during-the-covid-19-pandemic-people-of-color-were-more-likely-to-die-at-younger-ages/
4. “Medicare for All and Racial Justice,” National Nurses United, May 28, 2021
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vBefAKHVhec9V8LRg9wsiIEy46fZ3t8k/view
5. “US blacks 3 times more likely than whites to get COVID-19,” Stephanie Soucheray, CIDRAP, August 14, 2020
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/us-blacks-3-times-more-likely-whites-get-covid-19
6. “Medicaid Enrollment and Unwinding Tracker,” KFF, January 22, 2024
https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/medicaid-enrollment-and-unwinding-tracker/
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