In American Health Care, Prejudice Is Deadly

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed many longstanding injustices, economic and social, that make life unduly perilous for Black Americans. There’s one that deserves more attention, and that is personal for me: How physicians treat patients very differently, depending on race.

I’m a highly educated man living in one of the world’s richest nations, so you might assume that I enjoy better-than-average care. Yet it took me years of persistence and unnecessary suffering to get a digestive illness diagnosed. It turns out I’m not alone: Evidence suggests that doctors often don’t take seriously the complaints of Black patients. Such prejudice has deadly consequences, and stands in the way of efforts to address health disparities.