Patients Threatened by Reparations Medicine | RealClearPolitics
If this outrage were happening only in New York, the remedies would be simple. Voters have already thrown out Mayor Bill de Blasio, who saw virtually everything through a racial lens. But federal public health officials, and virtually the entire academic medical establishment, are pushing reparations medicine.
As the nation prepared to roll out vaccines in the fall of 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called on states to submit their distribution plans. On Sept. 16, 2020, the agency urged them to prioritize disadvantaged groups, including “people from racial and ethnic minority groups,” for vaccine supplies and appointments instead of spreading the resources equally. Thirty-four states complied.
Most used the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, which ranks every U.S. neighborhood based on 15 factors including density, income, and race and language. If two areas are similar in most factors, the one with a higher minority or non-English speaking population gets the higher scores and more resources.
North Carolina requested that local officials reserve 40% of daily vaccination appointments for historically marginalized populations.
University of Pennsylvania medical ethicists Harald Schmidt and Rebecca Weintraub, who reviewed the states’ plans in the journal Nature Medicine, are urging officials to “universalize” these preferences.
It’s one thing to wait for a vaccine or a test kit; it’s another to go to the back of the line for an ICU bed or ventilator. On April 21, 2020, in response to the pandemic, the University of Pittsburgh Department of Critical Care Medicine adopted a plan for triaging critically ill patients when beds and ventilators run low.
Patients get a score based on the likelihood of their survival, considering their organ function and other illnesses. But instead of allocating critical care, based only on chances of survival, Pitt will now add a “correction factor,” based on the patient’s zip code. Patients from the most disadvantaged neighborhoods will get their scores increased, leapfrogging ahead of others with the same medical conditions. But patients don’t want to worry that they’re getting less care because of the color of their skin or their zip code.