Do Black Lives really matter? NY's health policies set stage for Covid-19's racial, economic disparities: analysis

It looks like that Cuomo and DeBlasio only care about Black votes.



 NY's health policies set stage for Covid-19's racial, economic disparities: analysis

The factors that explain why black and Hispanic New Yorkers have died from Covid-19 at twice the rate of whites, when adjusting for age, are the result of decades of health policy decisions, according to a new analysis published by the Community Service Society.

The report examines why Covid-19 has affected people of different races and socioeconomic backgrounds differently and offers several policy solutions—some of which have been offered as ways to reduce health inequities long before Covid-19 appeared in New York.

Among the reasons it cites as drivers of disparities in Covid-19 outcomes are lack of access to health insurance and affordable care as well as inadequate funding for hospitals in poorer communities as compared to larger hospitals in wealthier neighborhoods.

"Those conditions didn't just suddenly materialize out of thin air," said Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society. "Our health care system's ability to respond to those conditions have been hamstrung by a bunch of historic health care financing and planning decisions."

The report notes that because many black and Hispanic people work in essential jobs that can't be done from home, they were more likely to be exposed to Covid-19.

A new study from public health researchers, including Michaela Martinez of Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, supports that theory. It concluded that workers in essential jobs drove subway use, and higher levels of subway use were associated with higher rates of Covid-19 cases. Researchers found it took about 28 days between the onset of reduced subway use and the end of the exponential growth of the virus in the five boroughs.

"Poorer neighborhoods are not afforded the same reductions in mobility as their higher-income counterparts," Martinez said in a statement.

The Community Service Society's report suggests several policy changes that could help communities of color and lower-income neighborhoods as Covid-19 continues to wind its way through the population. They include an expansion of insurance coverage to undocumented immigrants, declaring a moratorium on medical debt collection and better targeting state and federal aid to safety-net hospitals. Previous research from CSS has highlighted that not enough money from the state's indigent-care pool flows to facilities providing the most services to Medicaid and uninsured recipients.

The report also voices support for the New York Health Act, which would fund universal health insurance across the state.

Even as lawmakers debate some of these broader policy issues, they could make immediate changes to ensure testing is accessible to black and Hispanic New Yorkers, wrote Shoshanah Brown and Rose Gasner, who lead community nonprofit AirNYC.