Oops, sorry for the italics. :-(
Could it be because they are typically more likely to have health insurance that the hospitals can milk?
Probably because white kids live in sleepier more prosperous towns than black kids.
If your town has a couple of shootouts and driveby shootings each night, well then minor emergencies get cursory treatment.
If your town never sees a shot fired in anger and barely has a traffic light, well, they’ve got to do something in that hospital... so...
Could also be that they find out that the white kid actually has health insurance, and so they can arrange some lucrative tests.
This footnote to the article explains it all.
The white kids probably had health insurance. This article refers to "admittance" not "treatment." All the kids get treated, but no hospital wants to admit a kid without insurance. It's a money-loser. The hospital can only make money if they actively admit patients with insurance.
Follow the dollar.
I can speak from my experience. The answer is, "no." That doesn't make it universal, but I have a hunch.
Commercial hospitals play to insurance industry - dictated demographic profiles. That I am prepared to assert, even if I cannot prove it.
Incidentally, if you are ignored in an emergency room, and you drop dead, the hospital has no liability. The liability doesn't begin until they acknowledge you. Talk to a good lawyer -- a really exceptionally good lawyer if you can find that is both that and honest -- and it will be confirmed.
Hospitals, like any other industry, are darwinian in methodology. Anything to the contrary is window dressing.
However, I will also say that I had an experience with a foundation-supported hospital (All Children's in St. Pete, Florida), that was the opposite. It was first class and clearly they cared about their patience. There was a Ronald MacDonald house nearby for parents and ever since then I've dropped change into the box at McD's when I go there (if it's functioning).
Hospitals ~ Insurance Companies ~ Most Institutions = The Evil Empire.
As bill clinton might say, it depends what you mean by “hospitalized” or “admitted.”
They have to treat people without insurance, but they are likely to do it in the emergency room. If you have insurance and they admit you to a bed, then they collect a bundle.
To publish a racial study like this without "figur[ing] out why" comes dangerously close to statistical malpractice if not inciting a riot, IMHO.
The treasnous Boston Glob at work.
And so the push for Socialized Medicine in the US begins....(yet again)
Unnecessary by whose standards? We can’t be second guessing the ER docs. We don’t see what they see. A simple pneumonia may not be so classic in person. It may also be from lack of insurance. I have had docs want to admit before but the parents hold off because of money and education was done on what to do and bring them back if things got worse. If this was a follow the money, I would think medicaid would be a high one-two day admission. Free money :’( JMO
Researchers . . . assumed that the disparity was because the children of color were receiving less aggressive care. But in a new study, researchers found . . . the white children were over-admitted for conditions that could be readily treated at home.
They assumed "x" was true, but the new study revealed the "X" was true. Huh? Admitting kids for conditions that could be readily treated at home sure sounds like more "aggressive" care to me.
White kids are statistically from a higher economic class than black kids. The higher economic classes are more inclined to coddle their kids. What else is new? They are also more likely to buy their kids bike helmets and insist the kids wear them, more likely to monitor and reestrict their kids diets towards healthier foods, more likely to obsess over what colleges their kids get into, and on and on. It's habit forming. By the time the black and white kids show up at the emergency room, even if they have the same insurance coverage, the white (and other higher economic class) parents are far more likely to insist on unnecessary precautions like hospital admission, than the black (and other lower economic class) parents.
Another economic factor is a bit more concrete. The higher economic classes are better able to work around disruptions to their schedules and usual transportation. Less likely to lose pay from work if they take a couple of hours off to visit the kid in the hospital (and with younger kids, more likely to have one parent either not working outside the home or working only part time), less likely to be relying on slow and inconvenient public transportation to make extra visiting trips to the hospital, etc.
If the hospital doesn’t admit white kids with insurance, they wont have the income to stay open for those that don’t have insurance.
Insurance is probably the name of the game much more so then skin color. Take it from a “white” boy who hasn’t had health insurance for years,ahhhhhhhhh no tickee,no laundry !!!
The Blacks and Latinos would rather spend their money on Lexus and bling and not insurance.
Dope pushers don’t have a group insurance plan.
thanks, bfl
This is an agenda by the Boston Globe and other Dem media, to show that anyone that opposes amnesty for a bunch of law breakers must be prejudiced and that the "rumors" that illegals use up vital hospital resources is just a lie perpetrated by the racist white, gringo conservatives.
It doesn't mean anything to them that in areas where illegas are thickest hospitals and ERs have been shut down because of the drain on them. Forget about that, just drink this coolaid and you will support S1348. /SAR
I agree with the general concensus here that this is most likely about which of these kids has insurance coverage, however there may be another angle.
Consider - and I readily admit that I am blatantly stereotyping - your typical white suburban soccer mom. When her Precious Little Darling gets a little tummyache, she just knows its life-threatening, and insists that her little baby get the best treatment available. Even when it turns out that Precious Little Darling just had a spot of indigestion.
Now consider a typical inner-city, low-income minority mom. She knows that money’s tight, and she figures that a doctor probably knows more about the practice of medicine than she does - so when that doctor tells her it’s a common ailment, she decides to trust that doctor and let the kid stay home sick for a few days instead of in the hospital.