Race And Obamacare
I have been dealing with the health insurance marketplace recently. The details are none of the internet’s business. The process has involved computerized forms, with a lot of questions.
One of these questions is about race. You are asked which group you belong to. There is a long list of options. I looked for white, which is what I am. Supposedly, answering this question is optional.
Why do they need this information? Isn’t America supposed to be judging people on the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin? If this information is available to the person processing the information, will it affect the way the application is processed?
This could take several forms. You could have a racist white bureaucrat making trouble for black people. You could have a prejudiced black bureaucrat making trouble for white people. The bureaucrat might have an unconscious bias. None of these scenarios are fair.
This is not an affirmative action situation. The color of your skin should not affect your ability to obtain affordable healthcare. It is time for this question to be removed from the application. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Chamblee54 
Reblogged this on rennydiokno.com.
These are really terrific photos. Very evocative of a time long gone.
Asking what you identify as in terms of race and ethnic group is just a statistical inquiry, not a judgment. The Census Bureau’s job is to count and quantify who we are and how our populations change over time. That’s how we all found out that women live longer, and that Latinos and Hispanics are growing in number.
I work in an Urgent Care, and we don’t accept Obamacare insurance, but we still give the form with that set of questions to every new patient, and no, it isn’t mandatory to answer. But isn’t it interesting to know the difference between fact and assumption? There’s always a bit of a lag time between who we THINK we are as a country (which populations, genders etc.), and who we ARE according to the numbers.
[…] and maybe not. Are records secretly coded with with an indication of the persons race? (With the Health Insurance Marketplace, this information is explicitly on the application.) Or, is race just a divide and conquer tactic? […]