Eliminating racial discrimination in healthcare: A call for state healthcare anti-discrimination law

Abstract

Equal access to quality healthcare is a crucial issue facing the United States (2). For too long, too many Americans have been equal access to quality healthcare based on race, ethnicity, and gender (3). Many factors contribute to disparities: cultural incompetence of healthcare providers, socioeconomic inequities, disparate impact of facially neutral practices and policies, inadequacy of civil rights laws and enforcement, and multiple forms of discrimination. These disparities exist in health status, access to healthcare services, participation in health research and receipt of healthcare financing (4). This disparity in healthcare is doubly significant given the devastating racial disparity in health status that exists. The combination of racial disparity in health status, institutional racism in healthcare and inadequate legal protection points to a need for a major civil rights law for healthcare. © 2007 Humana Press Inc.