The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

Anytime a major piece of legislation is being pushed, there always has to be a racial component added to it in order to sweeten the sale to Americans. This health care bill was no exception. Recently, the NAACP, National Urban League, and other Civil Rights groups got together it what was being called a “Civil Rights war room” to help coordinate lobbying efforts to promote the health care bill. NAACP President, Ben Jealous had this to say~

NAACP President Ben Jealous said that, if the country had been able to have real health care reform in the 1990s, then 880,000 more Black Americans might be alive today.

“But [that] didn’t happen,” Jealous said. “They died because they couldn’t get the health care that they needed. And the impact is real. People die, children die. Black children are twice as likely to die before their first birthday [and] most Black people know someone who has died for want of effective health care policy.”

Ben, a few things for you before I ask you to go sit down somewhere.

1 – Government health care has been available in this country for decades. If it’s so good and there is a desperate call for it amongst Black folks, A., why then have we been self-discharging ourselves against doctor wishes at a higher rate than any other race under Medicare? B. Why then do many Black patients who take blood pressure medicine have to be coaxed with prizes and treats to take their medicine?

2a – Under existing government health care, how many Blacks have already died due to the poor quality of health care? This bill simply expands this type of health care to Americans who don’t have it.

2b – To your point about 880,000 Blacks possibly being alive today if this proposed policy would have been enacted years ago, “…at least 203,991 blacks in the 36 states and two cities (New York City and the District of Columbia) that reported abortions by race in 2005, according to the CDC (data here). On the flip, “During that same year, according to the CDC, a total of 198,385 blacks nationwide died from heart disease, cancer, strokes, accidents, diabetes, homicide, and chronic lower respiratory diseases combined.”That was just for one year.

If the NAACP can push to reopen old Civil Rights abuse cases that took place decades ago, did your organization investigate this claim?

“Several years ago, when 17,000 aborted babies were found in a dumpster outside a pathology laboratory in Los, Angeles, California, some 12-15,000 were observed to be black.”

This was the claim made by the late and former chairman of the Minnesota Commission on Human Rights, Erma Clardy Craven.

Millions of Black babies have been aborted in this country since Roe vs. Wade. That is an entire generation of Blacks who have been wiped out. Was any of this discussed in the Civil Rights war room?

Sit down, Ben!