Abstract

Over the past decades the mortality rate in the United States has decreased and life expectancy has increased. Yet a number of recent studies have drawn Americans attention to the fact that racial and ethnic disparities persist in health care. It is clear that the U.S. health care system is not only flawed for many reasons including basic injustices, but may be the cause of both injury and death for members of racial and ethnic minorities.In 2002, an Institute of Medicine report requested by Congress listed more than 100 studies documenting a wide range of disparities in the United States health care system. This report found that people belonging to racial and ethnic minorities often receive lower quality of health care than do people of European descent, even when their medical insurance coverage and income levels are the same as that of the latter.