In our recent poll on what it means to be sick in America, one ethnic group stands out as having special problems – Hispanic Americans.
The national survey, conducted by NPR with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, sheds new light on Hispanics' health issues. It runs counter to the widespread impression that African-Americans are worst-off when it comes to the cost and quality of health care.
Take the pocketbook issue. When we asked about the burden of out-of-pocket costs – the medical bills not covered by insurance or any government program — 42 percent of Hispanics say this is a "very serious" problem for them.
That's more than twice the proportion of non-Hispanic whites with recent illness who say so, and 8 percentage points higher than African-Americans.
Robert Blendon of Harvard, who helped design the poll, says Hispanics "are more likely to be uninsured or have insurance with big holes in it than African-Americans."
That may be, he says, because Hispanics are more likely to live in rural areas or in cities where fewer supports are available for uninsured or poorly insured people. "A lot of Hispanics work for small businesses with terrible insurance or none at all," Blendon notes. READ MORE
Comments