Improving the Health of Poor Americans

While the Affordable Care Act did much to address the problem of the uninsured, millions of Americans still lack coverage, and health disparities persist between the poor and the better off. According to a common view and many presidential candidates, we can solve the health problems of the indigent by expanding access to health care, perhaps through “Medicare-for-All.” But as Dr. David Orentlicher observed last week in his presentation at the annual Health Law Professors Conference of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics, improving access to care would mean treating the symptoms rather than the causes of health disparities. The poor suffer from ill health because they are poor rather than because they lack health care. The most important policies for health disparities are anti-poverty policies.

Read "Healthcare, Health, and Income" here