Side Effects: Obamacare Widens Health Care Disparities

Kathryn Nix / September 14, 2010

In a recent op-ed in the Spanish media, President Barack Obama espoused the new health reform law would ensure that minorities like Latinos would have access to health care services through better coverage options.

However, the President left out that the bulk of this “coverage” is pushing many Hispanic and African Americans into an inefficient program that has seen a sharp drop in physician participation. Obamacare puts an additional 16 million Americans into Medicaid, a poorly performing welfare program.

Rather than improve the health care system, the expansion is expected to exacerbate problems that riddle the poor-performing program—namely, poor quality and  low reimbursement rates to primary-care providers that have resulted in a physician shortage for Medicaid patients. (more…)