White Coats for Black Lives advocates that American medicine address racial inequities in health and health care by promoting diversity, eliminating implicit racial bias in the physician workforce, and advocating for equitable social structures.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(10):978-982. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.10.sect1-1510.
This month Virtual Mentor theme issue editor Elizabeth Miranda, a medical student at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, interviewed Dr. Elliott Fisher about the problem of unwarranted variation in health care services.
In the September 2014 issue on physicians as agents of social change, Dr. Audiey Kao, editor-in-chief of Virtual Mentor interviewed Dr. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development or USAID.
The social-justice question we must pose to physicians is: Are you willing to advocate for changes to the medical system that creates the need for you to take on charity care in the first place?
Assigning community based on race suggests that phenotype reveals something consistent about biology that is equal in standing to factors like weight, dietary habits, smoking history, and whether or not you had rheumatic fever as a child.
The importance of the Oregon experiment is that the state developed a public process for prioritizing medical services rather than relying on undisclosed private decisions by individuals or insurers.
If I am unwilling to pay more taxes so an 85-year-old stranger can have a left-ventricular assist device, then I am morally obligated to say the same holds true for a future version of me in those same circumstances.