Growing up, I knew, as a black person, I was going to have to fight harder for what I wanted. However, I never considered that it would include health care.

Strangely enough, I hadn’t given too much thought to racial disparities in medical treatment until very recently in life. Honestly, I don’t know why. If racial disparities can exist in other areas of life, why not health care delivery?

Nonetheless, I was floored to read the results of a recent study on cancer treatment. It states that many black cancer patients are not receiving health care any better than they had 10 years prior:

The researchers assessed the type of treatment given to more than 143,000 Americans over age 65 for lung, breast, colon, rectal and prostate cancer from 1992 to 2002 under the Medicare government health insurance program.

Black patients were consistently less likely than whites to receive the recommended types of treatment, the study found, and the problem was just as bad in 2002 as in 1992.

The solution? Fight for everything. Sadly, though I think that the last thing a sick person should have to do is fight for the same health care that other people get by virtue of skin color, this is just what seems necessary. Better yet, those of us who are still healthy need to stand up for those who are not because, without a doubt, some of us will be in those same shoes one day.

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