Law Commons^™

The Role Of Race In End-Of-Life Care, Barbara A. Noah

Faculty Scholarship

This essay focuses on one important aspect of racial disparities that has received comparatively little attention in the legal literature--the existence and causes of racial differences in end-of-life decision making and in the utilization of palliative and hospice care. African Americans and other racial minorities in the United States utilize palliative care and hospice less frequently than white Americans. These minority populations also tend to resist advance care planning and instead opt to receive more life-prolonging care at the end of life, even when quality of life and prognosis are poor. After a lifetime of limited access to health care …

Race And Healthcare In America: Foreword, Barbara A. Noah

Faculty Scholarship

In all four of the articles that form this Symposium, the authors identify troubling disparities and injustices in our healthcare system and suggest strategies to ameliorate these problems. Sadly, the reforms of the Obama administration will probably do little to address these issues directly. The mandated insurance coverage requirement, for example, applies to U.S. citizens and legal residents, but not, unsurprisingly, to undocumented immigrants? Similarly, the legislation expands public programs but does nothing directly to support the burden of EMT ALA's unfunded mandate on hospitals. And, as the evidence has long demonstrated, insurance coverage alone fails to guarantee equal medical …

The Invisible Patient (Reviewing Sally Satel, How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine (2000)), Barbara A. Noah

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the fact that African-Americans suffer from a variety of health problems at disproportionately higher rates than whites, inequities in the medical system make access to care more difficult for minorities. The problem of racial disparities in health care encompasses more than problems of access or payment, however. Communication difficulties between physician and patient and disparate provision of services covered by insurance also may contribute substantially to health disparities between the races. This review canvasses some of the evidence of differential medical treatment and offers some suggestions that may improve the quality of communication between physicians and patients. In addition …

Racial Disparities In The Delivery Of Health Care, Barbara A. Noah

Faculty Scholarship

This Article focuses on the role of conscious and unconscious racial bias in the delivery of care; it does not begin to address the larger issue of inadequate access to care at the outset. Improving access to health care for minorities will undoubtedly have a positive effect on these groups' overall health status; however, to the extent that racial bias in the delivery of care exists apart from problems of inadequate access, the disparity in health status between whites and African Americans will no doubt continue.

Part II of this Article describes racial disparities in a variety of health care …