Racial Preferences in Obamacare

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Transfer of wealth and “crucial decisions” aside, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act contains provisions that provide incentives for racial discrimination. {snip}

One provision states that programs with “a record of training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or from a rural or disadvantaged background” will be given priority for government money. This is only one of several such provisions. Programs and medical institutions that practice racial preferences will be moved further up the money queue than programs and medical institutions that disregard race.

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{snip} The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called the provisions racially discriminatory and sent President Barack Obama and Congress letters warning them about the provisions. The politicians ignored the warning, naturally.

The Commission said the inclusion of the discriminatory provisions appeared to motivated by a crusade to narrow racial health care disparities and the belief that the disparities are caused by a shortage of medical professionals who are members of preferred minority groups. {snip}

The Commission rightly concluded that medical institutions competing for federal dollars may end up lowering academic standards for minority applicants, and added that “race-based attempts to achieve some ill-defined ‘critical mass’ of minority students or to demonstrate a ‘sufficient’ record of training such students are constitutionally suspect. . . .

If the Obama administration’s going to violate the Civil Rights Act, one would think the discriminatory provisions actually would solve the racial health care disparity problem. The Commission cited research that showed raising the quality of care at hospitals in the 500 largest minority serving areas would improve minority health care more than eliminating racial disparities within every provider in the U.S.

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[The letter from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights referred to above can be downloaded as a PDF file here.]