Episode 9: A Most Shocking and Inhumane Form of Discrimination
The health care system in the United States is marked by racial discrimination and bias. From the Reconstruction Era until the present, African Americans have experienced racial discrimination in access to and treatment under the health care system. Many are aware of the Tuskegee experiments but other lesser-known situations have also occurred such as the case of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman who died of cancer in 1951 whose cells were "stolen" and used to make cancer drugs. Moreover, many African Americans have been denied treatment, received more unnecessary life-altering treatments like amputations, and were refused medicine for pain. The use of algorithms has exacerbated the problem. African Americans have found little support from the American Medical Association, leading to the National Medical Association, which was the first professional medical association for African Americans. Doug and Robin discuss these bias- and discrimination-based problems, their deadly results, and whether this problem can be solved under a universal health care system.
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