The Health Disparities Myth: Diagnosing the Treatment Gap

Many experts today insist that race profoundly affects how the medical-care system deals with patients, and that black patients will get care that is inferior to white patients. Is this true? In The Health Disparities Myth, Jonathan Klick and Sally Satel conclude that differences in treatment indeed vary by race but not because of it. Data show that third factors, especially geography and socioeconomic factors, generate the strongest momentum in driving the treatment gap. Because health care varies a great deal depending on where people live, and because blacks are overrepresented in regions of the United States served by poorer health care facilities, disparities are, at least in part, a function of residence and not of discrimination.