Health Care Reform & Questions African Americans should Ask

To My Black Colleagues:

Will Health Care Reform mean that all of the so-called Public Hospitals that blacks have been force to go to for decades will be done away with and replaced with new modern hospitals so that blacks will no longer have to go these government run hospitals for medical care? These inner-city Public hospitals are considered as government run medical programs.

From my understanding the answer is no. Poor blacks in inner-cities across America will still be forced to go to public hospitals, hospitals that the members of Congress will not be caught dead in. As a child I remember going to Public Hospitals. My mother was so upset with their care and their lack of sensitivity toward black folks that she stop taking us to the hospital and came up with home remedies to treat us. I still have several of the medical books that my mother bought to treat her family. These public hospitals are government run hospitals, but they are never referred to when Congress is asked can they provide quality health care programs.

According to Tavis Smiley's State of The Black Union, since the Tuskegee Experiment, blacks do not trust the government and government run hospitals. Not only was there the Tuskegee Experiment, there have been other secret government experiments targeting blacks, one in particular at the prison in Monroe, Washington (state) a few years ago. Because of the Tuskegee Experiment, the 20,000 members of the National Medical Association (an African American Professioal Medical Association) demanded an apology from the Clinton Administration. Clinton said, "To our African American citizens, I am sorry that your federal government orchestrated a study so clearly racist...."

Should blacks trust the government's proposed Health Choice Commissioners in Section 201 of the proposed Health Care Bill, a Commission that will decide what care the patient should receive, particularly when blacks know that this is the same government that has approved a system of death that has killed over 17 million black babies and a system that was started and inspired by Eugenics (a program to control the population growth of blacks)? If a black need medical care, can he or she trust this Commission to reach a decision without the consideration of one's race? Or will the commissioners withhold treatment of the black and just let him or her die because they are old or a gang banger? How can they assure blacks that these Commissioners are not prejudice?

These are some of the questions that blacks should be asking Congress.

Rev. Wayne Perryman