If you’re white and middle class, the push for health care “equity” could kill you.
Prominent medical organizations and the Biden administration are pushing for rules that will move “disadvantaged” populations to the front of the line for scarce medical resources — think vaccines, ventilators, monoclonal antibody treatments. That means everyone else waits longer, in some cases too long.
If the public doesn’t push back soon, getting fair treatment in the hospital will become as hard as getting into college or getting hired based on your own merits.
Last week, the New York Post reported that the New York City Taskforce on Racial Inclusion and Equity prioritized the distribution of COVID-19 testing kits to 31 neighborhoods. Staten Island’s racially diverse North Shore got 13 testing sites, while the mostly white South Shore got none.
Meanwhile, the state’s Department of Health announced that scarce monoclonal antibody treatments will be allocated to patients based on those who have the most risk factors. Risk factors include age, vaccine status, medical conditions, and, you guessed it, “non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity.”
If this outrage were happening only in New York, the remedies would be simple. Voters have already thrown out Mayor Bill de Blasio, who saw virtually everything through a racial lens. But federal public health officials, and virtually the entire academic medical establishment, are pushing reparations medicine.
As the nation prepared to roll out vaccines in the fall of 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called on states to submit their distribution plans. On Sept. 16, 2020, the agency urged them to prioritize disadvantaged groups, including “people from racial and ethnic minority groups,” for vaccine supplies and appointments instead of spreading the resources equally. Thirty-four states complied.
Most used the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, which ranks every U.S. neighborhood based on 15 factors, including density, income, and race and language. If two areas are similar in most factors, the one with a higher minority or non-English speaking population gets the higher scores and more resources.
North Carolina requested that local officials reserve 40% of daily vaccination appointments for historically marginalized populations.
University of Pennsylvania medical ethicists Harald Schmidt and Rebecca Weintraub, who reviewed the states’ plans in the journal Nature Medicine, are urging officials to “universalize” these preferences.
It’s one thing to wait for a vaccine or a test kit; it’s another to go to the back of the line for an ICU bed or ventilator. On April 21, 2020, in response to the pandemic, the University of Pittsburgh Department of Critical Care Medicine adopted a plan for triaging critically ill patients when beds and ventilators run low.
Patients get a score based on the likelihood of their survival, considering their organ function and other illnesses. But instead of allocating critical care based only on chances of survival, Pitt will now add a “correction factor,” based on the patient’s zip code. Patients from the most disadvantaged neighborhoods will get their scores increased, leapfrogging ahead of others with the same medical conditions. But patients don’t want to worry that they’re getting less care because of the color of their skin or their zip code.
Pitt defends focusing on the needs of the “most disadvantaged.”
Pitt insists that triage decisions will be made by a committee, never by the patient’s physician. That’s no surprise. The scheme violates the Hippocratic oath, which commits a physician to do everything possible for the individual patient, not withhold care for the sake of social justice or even another patient down the hall.
Meanwhile, a group of Oregon physicians has been pressing the Oregon Health Authority to adopt a triage scheme similar to Pitt’s, considering a patient’s home address as well as medical conditions. And doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston are pushing for a “reparations framework” to offset past discrimination in access to the cardiovascular care unit.
These schemes should be horrifying to most Americans. No one wants to be the victim of racism in medicine.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and author of “The Next Pandemic.” Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey.
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Total Violation of BOTH State and Federal Laws on DISCRIMINATION.
START SUING.
Yes, it was only a matter of time until the Democrats leveraged the medical system to push their political agenda into the hospital systems under the guise of what they call social, economic or racial justice. I can’t say I’m surprised at all, as this is pretty much standard fare in most socialist / communist countries where a committee or the government agency routinely decides whether you get a certain level of medical care based on various discriminatory factors.
I’m sure some lawsuits will be filed here and there attempting to stop this practice, but that is a slow, laborious process that can take years to go through the courts. In the meantime seriously ill patients in need to immediate medical care will either suffer or die. Elections at the local, state and federal level all do have real world consequnces. So does inaction by the public when policies like these go into effect and are greeted with a collective shrug. The less resistence the left sees to policies like this, the more they are emboldened to impose even more draconian policies upon society.
And they use the term racism and Jim Crow each time. Let me say that they should be charged. This country is going to hell in a handbag.
This is the Democratic strategy. It’s the “Stray Cat,” strategy. Feed them and they will return to you.
Star Trek: Voyager foresaw this decades ago: youtu.be/LkQJJ8iDmik
This article’s last sentence speaks volumes: “No one wants to be the victim of racism in medicine.”
I am SHOCKED (shocked ?) that such a thing has ever existed.
Disease knows NO victims any race or color etc
See cancer, etc
This is the plan-to annihilate the white race little by little, starting with the old and debilitated, to make room for the “brown” race to start to evolve. The financial status will be rich and poor, no exceptions. I am praying that my whole family will be long gone by the time this comes to light.
Stand up for your lives here people, this is no joke!
This might be a positive for us whites….since I truly believe that the vaccinations will kill a lot of people, the disadvantaged will again be the disadvantaged. We have communists in charge and we need to get rid of them before they take America down.
Government “corrections” always cause collateral damage and usually fail to fix the original issue.
That’s called using Peter to pay Paul theory. To really fix the problem of eliminating limits in healthcare resources means forcing the health insurance companies and Big Pharma to put money into their systems and lower their profit lines—which action goes totally against their ingrained philosophy. The only way to fight them is to demand full explanations of all costs When it only cost them a mere fraction. Hiding this farce under the umbrella of biased discrimination claiming backwards racism will never solve the problem but cause more Problem
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The ones in control now are all mentally deficient. What will they think of next??
They are all racing to see who gets the best benefits in Hell !
Imagine being sent to the back of the line so a “recent illegal arrival” can be treated first. The very people that haven’t been required to even test for this virus. Many who entered the U.S. infected ,then were relocated across the country.
Step right up criminals. drug dealers, murderers, sex traffic-ers.
We’re a step away from Whites being sent to death camps.
My God will provide my every need. That is his word. Medical facilities are not even close to what he will do for me. I saw this coming. Add up how much these medical facilities have received from the government in one form or other related to Covid. Positive cases, ventilators and deaths reported. Big bucks. No wonder inflation is through the roof
Can anyone say RACISM?