Minorities in medicine

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The United States needs more black, Hispanic and American Indian doctors and nurses if minorities have any hope of catching up to whites in terms of the quality and accessibility of health care, a special commission said Monday.

While blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans make up more than 25 percent of the U.S. population, they represent only 9 percent of the nation's nurses, 6 percent of doctors and 5 percent of dentists, the Sullivan Commission on Diversity in the Health Workforce said.

"Access to health professions remains largely separate and unequal," said Dr. Louis Sullivan, a former U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, who chaired the privately funded commission that includes health, business and education officials.

"We know that minority physicians, dentists and nurses are more likely to serve minority and medically underserved populations, yet there is a severe shortage of minorities in the health professions. Without much more diversity in the health workforce, minorities will continue to suffer," Sullivan added in a statement.

Many studies have shown clear disparities in health care in the United States.

For instance, black men are far more likely to die of heart disease and prostate cancer than are white men, while black women are more likely to die of breast cancer than white women -- even though they have lower overall rates of the disease.

"The dearth of minority health professionals directly contributes to the nation's crisis of lower quality of health care and higher rates of illness and disability among a growing number of residents," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

"Our nation's population is becoming increasingly diverse, and our health work force should reflect that," Benjamin added.

The 16-member commission said one place to start rectifying the problem was at universities, medical schools and nursing colleges where only a small percentage of the faculties are ethnic minorities,

Minorities should be encouraged to go into the health professions, in part by offering more scholarships instead of student loans, the commission said.

The commission also recommended increased funding for research about racial disparities in health, language training for health professionals and federal legislation to ensure the development of a diverse work force.

CNN

Is this study really saying that the solution to low income individuals not having adequate health care is to get minority health care workers?
The premise of that would be that white doctors won't see patients without the means to pay for racial reasons, not monetary reasons. Do we really think medical workers who are from minority groups would pay for their education, pay to set up their practice and all that entails and then start giving their services free of charge to people with the same skin color?

i don't know about this. it seems like faulty reasoning to me.
Problem: many minorities don't get adequate health care
Reason: the vast majority of doctors are white
Solution: get minority doctors

What do you all think?