Health Care and Disparity in a “Post-Racial” Era

Photo by Sean Sime Photography

Seton Hall Law School recently hosted the Third National People of Color Conference, which was convened to “address critical national and global issues through the lens of legal scholarship that explicitly and implicitly examines contemporary racial context.”

The conference brought together over 400 judges, law professors, lawyers and students to our campus over the course of  four days and featured panels and speeches by people such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson; the Honorable Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, New Jersey; Professor Derek Bell, Visiting Professor at New York University School of Law; Kathleen Martinez, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Disability Employment; The Honorable Joseph A. Greenaway, U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit; Gay McDougall, United Nations Independent Expert on Minority Issues; Keith Harper, former Appellate Justice of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation; and just too many other smart and interesting people to list here. (A good account of the Conference in Diverse Magazine can be found here).

Involved in some of the on site prep work, I was unable to attend nearly as much as I would have liked. But I did have the opportunity to listen to a number of thought provoking presentations, including speeches by Jesse Jackson, Mayor Booker, Keith Harper and Katleen Martinez.

In considering the theme of the conference, “Our Country, Our World in a ‘Post-Racial’ Era,” it was made clear time and time again that despite the rhetoric that has bounced about our nation since President Obama took office, when looking at numerical indicators for well being in the United States racial identity, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, and disability status matter.

I realize that I am saying nothing new here–nor am I saying it as well as I heard it. But I think it also bears repeating.

It is also worth noting, when looking at the disparity in health care access, utilization, and quality of received care, that here in New Jersey as a response to a budget crisis, the state recently summarily stripped over 12,000 legal immigrants of their right to health care through Medicaid. Our Center for Social Justice here at Seton Hall Law has sued the State of New Jersey for doing so as a violation of both the state and federal constitutions as a matter of, among other things, equal protection. Such actions by the state assuredly do not bode well for the health care variance numbers below; and maybe, when considering the disparities in health care, “equal protection,” in the largest sense of the word, is the appropriate lens through which to view this.

But it is also, within the context of anyone’s verbal meanderings about a supposed “post-racial” society, important to note that news of the suit was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Star Ledger, Asbury Park Press, The Record, The Daily Record, The Courier Post, Home News & Tribune, The Jersey Journal, MSNBC, PolitickerNJ, Newsday, Immigration Prof Blog and other media throughout New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.

Reader’s comments were decidedly not kind. Having done a great deal of work with and for immigrant communities, the urban disenfranchised, Guantanamo Detainees, and others unpopular and unjustly treated, we’re used to it here at Seton Hall Law. But I invite anyone entertaining delusions about a “post-racial” era to take a look at the comments. Or, for that matter, the comments on almost any newspaper article that deals with immigration– or race.

Having said that, I also invite you to take a look at the following numbers and study results from HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Below that, you’ll find a really interesting lecture from a Health Care Disparities Class at Case Western Reserve University from Professor Insoo Hyun. The video is courtesy of the Case Center for Reducing Health Disparities and their well produced blog and resource center.

As for the studies and numbers, though just a small sampling, I’ll let them speak for themselves:

Identifying Disparities in Care

Access to Primary Care

Primary care is the underpinning of the health care system, and research studies have shown that having a usual source of care raises the chance that people receive adequate preventive care and other important health services. Data from AHRQ’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) reveal that:

• About 30 percent of Hispanic and 20 percent of black Americans lack a usual source of health care compared with less than 16 percent of whites.
• Hispanic children are nearly three times as likely as non-Hispanic white children to have no usual source of health care.
• African Americans and Hispanic Americans are far more likely to rely on hospitals or clinics for their usual source of care than are white Americans (16 and 13 percent, respectively, v. 8 percent).

Diagnosis and Treatment

Race and ethnicity influence a patient’s chance of receiving many specific procedures and treatments. Of nine hospital procedures investigated in one study, five were significantly less common among African American patients than among white patients; three of those five were also less common among Hispanics, and two were less common among Asian Americans. Other AHRQ-supported studies have revealed additional disparities in patient care for various conditions and care settings including:

• Heart disease. African Americans are 13 percent less likely to undergo coronary angioplasty and one-third less likely to undergo bypass surgery than are whites.
• Asthma. Among preschool children hospitalized for asthma, only 7 percent of black and 2 percent of Hispanic children, compared with 21 percent of white children, are prescribed routine medications to prevent future asthma-related hospitalizations.
• Breast cancer. The length of time between an abnormal screening mammogram and the followup diagnostic test to determine whether a woman has breast cancer is more than twice as long in Asian American, black, and Hispanic women as in white women.
• Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. African Americans with HIV infection are less likely to be on antiretroviral therapy, less likely to receive prophylaxis for Pneumocystis pneumonia, and less likely to be receiving protease inhibitors than other persons with HIV. An HIV infection data coordinating center, now under development, will allow researchers to compare contemporary data on HIV care to examine whether disparities in care among groups are being addressed and to identify any new patterns in treatment that arise.
• Nursing home care. Asian American, Hispanic, and African American residents of nursing homes are all far less likely than white residents to have sensory and communication aids, such as glasses and hearing aids. A new study of nursing home care is developing measures of disparities in this care setting and their relationship to quality of care.

Looking Beyond Income and Insurance

Disparities in health care are often ascribed to differences in income and access to insurance. Research has shown these to be important, but by no means the only factors. For instance, the proportion of Hispanic Americans with a usual source of care has declined substantially over the past decade (from 80 percent in 1986 to 70 percent in 1996). Insurance coverage has also declined, and the lack of insurance in some groups is dramatic (among Hispanic men, for instance, 37 percent have no health insurance). Nonetheless, declines in insurance coverage explained only one-fifth of the change in access to a usual source of care.

In another recent study, AHRQ-funded researchers in Boston examined the quality of care provided to hospital patients with congestive heart failure or pneumonia. Quality of care was measured both by physician review and by adherence to standards of care. The researchers found no difference in quality of care for patients from poor communities compared with other patients, after adjusting for other factors. They did find, however, that African American patients received a lower quality of care than white patients.

Physician Decisionmaking

A small study of physicians’ decisions about whether to refer patients for cardiac catheterization, a diagnostic procedure for heart disease, provides supportive evidence that factors other than insurance and income can influence the quality of care people get. This study, which used actors portraying similar economic backgrounds, found that black women were significantly less likely than white men to be recommended for referral, despite reporting the same symptoms. (Differences between other groups studied were not statistically significant.)

Hospital Characteristics

In the Boston study of the quality of care, quality for African American patients was lower in nonteaching than in teaching hospitals. In another study, white patients were more likely than Hispanic and African American patients to receive invasive cardiac procedures in hospitals performing a high volume of such procedures, a factor strongly associated with the quality of cardiac care.

Ethical Marketing Measures in Access to Medicines Index: An Important First Step

Photo by La Chiquita via Flickr

Earlier this week, the Access to Medicine Foundation released its 2010 Access to Medicine Index, “a ranking of the world´s largest pharmaceutical companies on their efforts to increase access to medicine for societies in need.”

In a change from the 2008 Index, which was the first to be issued, the 2010 Index includes measures designed to assess companies’ commitment to, and practice of, ethical marketing behavior.  Per the report accompanying the Index, “[t]he marketing and promotion of drugs can have a significant influence on the type of medicines that patients receive.  Particularly in Index Countries [88 countries with low or medium levels of development] with less robust regulatory enforcement and consumer protection, the marketing behavior of pharmaceutical companies can shape access to both appropriate and affordable medicines.  Unethical marketing can lead to suboptimal clinical decisions, prescription of more expensive drugs and irrational use of medicines by consumers, which can result in reduced treatment efficacy and other complications, such as adverse drug reaction and drug resistance.”

The Index ranks pharmaceutical companies’ marketing behavior along three axes: (1) commitments, (2) transparency, and (3) performance.  In the commitments category, companies are assigned points for the marketing codes and standards they have adopted and that they require their local third party sales agents to adopt.  For example, “originators,” i.e., research-based pharmaceutical companies, receive 5 points on a scale of 1-5 for committing to the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) Code of Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices, the WHO Ethical Criteria for Medicinal Drug Promotion, “or an equivalent industry code.”  Originators that have not committed to any external codes but that have an internal code which covers the same core principles receive 2.5 points.  (The scoring is different for generics on this measure because they do not have a “viable up to date and auditable external code.”)  With regard to third party sales agents, both originator and generic companies can receive all 5 points if they make “specific ethical marketing demands” of their sales agents and then audit the agents’ practices to ensure compliance.

Photo by PhilieCasablanca via Flickr

For transparency, the Index gives points to companies that “publicly disclose[] detailed information regarding [their] marketing and promotional programs in the Index Countries, such as payments to physicians or other key opinion leaders and also its promotional activities for other healthcare providers, distributors, etc.”  None of the companies earned any points in this category.  While some have started to disclose payments made in the United States, no company has disclosed payments made in any of the Index Countries.  According to the report, three companies — GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and Roche — have pledged to disclose payments made in the Index Countries soon.  Companies can also earn disclosure points for revealing breaches of marketing codes and marketing-related litigation in the Index Countries.

For the third category, performance, companies lose points if they breach the IFPMA Code or if they are sued or subjected to fines for marketing behavior.  Companies can earn points for including binding ethical marketing requirements in their agreements with their sales agents and by establishing employee codes of conduct in the Index Countries equivalent to the codes they have in place in other markets.  Despite the fact that issues have been raised “about pharmaceutical marketing practices in the Index Countries, especially regarding clear mention of … adverse side effects,” none of the companies studied lost any points in this category.

As the title of this post suggests, I think that the Index’s attempt to rank companies’ commitment to and practice of ethical marketing practices is important.  Anyone who works in a law school knows how influential rankings can be — for better or for worse.  It is easy to imagine the Access to Medicine rankings providing an additional nudge to companies to begin disclosing payments to healthcare providers around the world not just here in the United States.  At the same time, there is ample room for refinement.  In the performance category, for example, measures, in addition to breaching the IFPMA Code/being sued/ being fined, are needed to expose differences that surely exist in companies’ approaches to marketing in the Index Countries.

Consumer Protection in a Reformed Health Care & Insurance System

Implementation is critical to the success of translating universal coverage into access to appropriate health care for all.  Sound follow-through demands the design and execution of well-tailored consumer protection regulations. The first step is a prohibition of underwriting or rating decisions based on preexisting illness.  Insurers have agreed to this reform, as a quid pro quo for the millions of new customers they’ll get from coverage mandates.  Universal coverage and this prohibition of discrimination go together.  Insurers are right that it doesn’t make business sense to ignore preexisting illnesses if consumers can wait for illness to appear before contributing to the insurance pool.  They seem to agree that coverage mandates can adequately do the work of preexisting illness exclusions, rendering them superfluous.

Insurers’ position on non-discrimination would clearly change if folks like Rep. Tom Price (R. Ga.) have their way.  Price objects to mandates because they would allow the government to define “insurance” thereby disadvantaging some forms of currently-marketed coverage, such as bare-bones and HSA-linked consumer-driven products.  But underinsurance has been devastating the American middle class for years; real reform must establish basic levels of fiscal security, as well as medical coverage.  Representative Price’s attack on standards is, then, merely a back door attack on universal coverage.  It is a necessary package deal: either we have universal coverage with an end to preexisting illness exclusions, or markets will continue slicing and dicing “insurance,” leaving huge gaps in coverage. Read more