Issues of Race and Poverty: Lack of Medical Coverage Creates Gap in Colon Cancer Treatment
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Other cancers have recently been linked to a greater genetic incidence within non-white communities. Breast cancer, for example, seems to appear in a more virulent form in Hispanic and African American Women. This means that regardless of what kind of medical coverage they have, non-white women are more likely to die from breast cancer if they get it.
But that's not the case with colon cancer.
Around 52,000 people die every year of colon cancer, and another 112,000 will be diagnosed, making colon cancer treatment an important, and expensive, tool for treating the disease.
And more African Americans will be unable to access that treatment, due to their lack of medical coverage. The article makes it clear: "social, economic and health care inequalities -- not genes -- are probably to blame for black Americans' higher rate of colorectal cancer death compared to whites."
What this means is that with proper health insurance, many non-white Americans could be saved from an unnecessary cancer related death.
Affordable medical coverage is the key to protecting non-white communities from diseases like these, by providing checkups that could identify or prevent the onset of cancer altogether, and by providing access to cancer treatments that could keep victims of the disease alive.
This, more than any other reason, is why the healthcare system needs to redefine health insurance, and provide coverage of some kind at affordable rates to all Americans.