Medicare and Medicaid's Role in Advancing Black Health
How Black Health Changed for the Better
Medicare and Medicaid's Role in Advancing Black Health
You have to understand this…
For Black Americans, Medicare and Medicaid is more than just health insurance programs—they are lifelines programs.
As mentioned multiple times before…
Before 1965, Black Americans were largely shut out of the healthcare system, forced to rely on segregated, underfunded, and often neglectful hospitals. This wasn’t just an inconvenience—it was a death sentence for many.
Take Black infant mortality rates, as just one example:
📉 1916: Black infant mortality was 184.9 deaths per 1,000 live births, a staggering 87% higher than white infant mortality.
📉 1920: Black infant mortality was still 43% higher than white infant mortality.
📉 2017: It dropped to 10.8 per 1,000 live births—a massive improvement since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid.
But hold on—Black babies are still dying at disproportionately high rates.
In 2017, Black Infant Mortality Rate was 122% higher than the white infant mortality rate of 4.9 per 1,000 live births.
So no, Medicare and Medicaid didn’t fix everything, but they closed health disparities the size of the Grand Canyon.
For all the physicians who complain about the inefficiencies of Medicare and Medicaid, there are those who understand the alternative—a country where entire communities were left to die without care.
Who’s Holding Up the System? URiM Physicians.
In 2024, the The Annals of Family Medicine (Fancy medical journal name) released a paper called …
A Few Doctors Will See Some of You: The Critical Role of Underrepresented in Medicine (URiM) Family Physicians in the Care of Medicaid Beneficiaries
They highlighted three truths about URiM physicians:
Black and Latino family physicians are more likely to participate in the Medicaid program compared to their white and Asian counterparts.
URiM physicians tend to care for a higher number of Medicaid patients, addressing a critical need in underserved communities.
The study suggests that URiM physicians play a crucial role in providing healthcare to socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, potentially reducing health disparities.
Translation? Not enough doctors are accepting Medicaid patients—but those who do? They are disproportionately Black and Latino physicians.
Why do these doctors take on this burden?
Because they know the history. They understand that Medicare and Medicaid were hard-won victories, designed to protect the people that the healthcare system had ignored for centuries.
And without them?
This country’s healthcare system would be in shambles.
Because as money, power, and greed continue to take over healthcare, it’s these doctors who are holding the line.
But What Happens If That Line Breaks?
On February 25, 2025, the House of Representatives voted to include steep Medicaid cuts ($880 Billion Dollars) in the next federal spending bill.
So let’s be clear about what’s at stake:
🛑 If these programs are cut…
❌ Black communities will lose access to vital healthcare services, reversing decades of progress.
❌ More Americans could be pushed into medical debt, deepening racial wealth disparities.
❌ Without federal funding tied to civil rights laws, hospitals could be less accountable for discrimination, setting back healthcare equity by decades.
The dismantling of these programs would be a direct attack on racial justice in healthcare.
We know this because we’ve seen it before.
Will We Let History Repeat Itself?
Dr. W. Montague Cobb. Dr. George Simkins. So many others.
They fought for a future where healthcare was a right, not a privilege.
But today, the very programs that broke down racial barriers in medicine are under attack.
Medicaid protects over 72 million people.
34 million of them are children.
If we stay silent, that future disappears.
So now, Dose Squad, the question is:
💊 What will we do to protect the future of healthcare in America?
Take Action—Right Now.
This isn’t just another headline. This is a call to arms. Here’s how you can fight back:
📞 Take 5-10 minutes and call your United States Senator’s office
✍🏾 Write your Congressperson—at the federal, state, AND local level.
📢 Flood their offices with your concerns. Demand that they protect these programs.
Remind them: their job is to represent their communities—not corporate healthcare interests.
The System Keeps Changing—But Who Does It Serve?
We’ve seen how Medicare and Medicaid forced hospitals to desegregate.
We’ve seen how Black health outcomes started to shift when access to care expanded.
We’ve seen how the physicians who fought for these programs shaped a future they weren’t sure they’d live to see.
But the system didn’t stop evolving.
Because while Medicare and Medicaid changed the game for Black health, they weren’t the final chapter.
The next frontier? Children’s health.
So in the next dose, we’re diving into:
👶🏾 How these programs transformed children’s health in the U.S.
📜 The policies that expanded and threatened their impact.
🏥 And how it all set the stage for the Affordable Care Act.
The system keeps changing—but is it changing for the better?
Get ready for your next dose. 💊🔥 #TheAdvocacyDose
Sources:
Singh GK, Yu SM. Infant Mortality in the United States, 1915-2017: Large Social Inequalities have Persisted for Over a Century. Int J MCH AIDS. 2019;8(1):19-31. doi: 10.21106/ijma.271. PMID: 31049261; PMCID: PMC6487507.
Anushree Vichare, et al. lA Few Doctors Will See Some of You: The Critical Role of Underrepresented in Medicine (URiM) Family Physicians in the Care of Medicaid Beneficiaries. The Annals of Family Medicine Sep 2024, 22 (5) 383-391; DOI: 10.1370/afm.3140