The NYTimes has a pretty good article on health disparities in the US. Though I must express frustration that of the list of reasons why there are increasing health gaps between rich and poor, health care is listed as the last reason. Most interesting to me is the widening of the gap, both across race and class.

Health gains can pretty much be seen across the board; the widening of the gap is mostly explained by greater gains for rich people. While in 1980 rich people could expect to live 2.8 years longer than poor people, buy 2000 had widened to about 4.5 years. Black man fare particularly poorly (and the rising disparity of AIDS - blacks are 10 times more likely than whites to contract the disease - makes this story even more dramatic). What I find most interesting is that it was 1980 where the tide turned; from the 60s through the 80s the gap shrank (both the class and race gap); but this is where the story ends.

The Times, of course, gives nods to “both sides” of the story. So they tell us what professors and government officials think, and then what folks at conservative think-tanks think. So, we’re told,

Robert E. Moffit, director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said one reason for the growing disparities might be “a very significant gap in health literacy” — what people know about diet, exercise and healthy lifestyles. Middle-class and upper-income people have greater access to the huge amounts of health information on the Internet, Mr. Moffit said. Thomas P. Miller, a health economist at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed. “People with more education tend to have a longer time horizon,” Mr. Miller said. “They are more likely to look at the long-term consequences of their health behavior. They are more assertive in seeking out treatments and more likely to adhere to treatment advice from physicians.”

What’s interesting about this is that professors and government officials are assumed to be liberal. And therefore what they tell us can be read as opinion, just like the foundation folks. But what’s odd about this trend is that whereas the profs/officials generally report information on the basis of studies and/or data, the foundation folks rarely do. At least that’s what I anecdotally find in the Times. So while it’s reported that something like a “health IQ” (my term for what the folks above are talking about) could be an explanation, we don’t have any data that suggests it actually is. In fact, earlier in this story, we’re presented with data that suggests that it isn’t.

In a recent report, the Department of Veterans Affairs found that black patients “tend to receive less aggressive medical care than whites” at its hospitals and clinics, in part because doctors provide them with less information and see them as “less appropriate candidates” for some types of surgery.

(Yes, I know that in one instance we’re talking about class, and the other, race). I know journalism folks write all the time about “equal time” to political views. But I’d want to push this further. If you’re going to get info from someone, why not ask what they’re using to back it up? And why not have these folks talk to one another (”Hey, Heritage person, respond to DVA report” and vice-versa).