3 ms·
This isn't really an argument I want to wade into. But I just wanted to point out that there is a well-established racial divide in post-surgical mortality risk
by benbreen 9y ago
This isn't really an argument I want to wade into. But I just wanted to point out that there is a well-established racial divide in post-surgical mortality risk in the US, based on peer-reviewed studies [1] [2]. Hoping that may change your mind about the "casual racism" of the quoted comment, which looks perfectly reasonable to me.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448914/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448914/ ("Black patients have higher operative mortality risks across a wide range of surgical procedures, in large part because of higher mortality rates at the hospitals they attend.")
[2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/401997 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/401... ("Race and insurance status each independently predicts outcome disparities after trauma. African American, Hispanic, and uninsured patients have worse outcomes.")
- yourapostasy 9y agoI have yet to find a study that accounts for confounding variables like hospital mortality rate, key biomarkers (blacks have a greater incidence of diabetes, for example), insurance status, financial standing, doctor ranking, educational level, patient compliance, etc., to arrive at a statistically significant conclusion there is a racial element in healthcare delivery outcomes. The examples you gave would feed into such a study, but are still not teasing out the complex socioeconomic factors that already plague blacks (which are another ball of wax to unwind for causes). Don’t have a dog in this fight either way; want to see more big data-driven analysis of policy questions now that it is more practical to do so.