New York Times: Tackling a Racial Gap in Breast Cancer Survival
“Despite 20 years of pink ribbon awareness campaigns and numerous advances in medical treatment that have sharply improved survival rates for women with breast cancer in the United States, the vast majority of those gains have largely bypassed black women.”
“Even among women with Medicare coverage, black women were significantly less likely than white women to have seen a primary care doctor in the six to 18 months before diagnosis…”
This is why ObamaCare will not reduce any gaps in health outcomes. Even with insurance, black people are less likely to take care of their health. They have not been taught, and cannot intuit, that prevention and early detection are preferable to treatment of an advanced disease. If we want to improve the survival rate of black women with cancer, we will need to to develop an outreach program begging black women to get tested. We should do this because the public will bear the costs if we ignore this problem.
