Led by California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, tapped to lead the Health and Human Services Department, Biden’s healthcare team is aiming for an ambitious agenda to reshape a healthcare system that still leaves millions of Black and Latino Americans with weaker insurance protections, less access to care and poorer outcomes.
WASHINGTON — As President-elect Joe Biden prepares to tackle the devastating COVID-19 pandemic killing thousands of Americans a day, he has given his health team another equally challenging task: rooting out entrenched racial inequalities in American healthcare.
Led by California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, tapped by the incoming president to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Biden’s healthcare team is aiming for an ambitious agenda to reshape a system that still leaves millions of Black and Latino Americans with weaker insurance protections, less access to care and poorer outcomes.
The effort will face an early and critical test as the administration seeks to blunt the calamitous impact the pandemic is having on communities of color.
“COVID unmasked how serious many of these issues are,” Becerra said in an interview with The Times. “The camouflage that may have hidden some of these disparities has been ripped away…. There is no excuse not to take them on.”
Becerra, if confirmed by the Senate, will be the first Latino to hold the nation’s highest healthcare post.
The challenge he and others on the Biden team face is immense. The coronavirus outbreak has devastated Black and Latino communities, spreading not only disease and death, but also severe economic hardship.
Black Americans, for example, account for more than a third of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S., though they represent only about 12% of the population, according to a study of selected states and cities with data on COVID deaths.
Black and Latino Americans are also more likely to have lost a job or seen their income reduced during the pandemic than white Americans, a recent nationwide poll by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found. At home, Latino and Black parents are also facing a tougher time caring for their children amid the outbreak, the study revealed.
“This is a crisis that has fallen disproportionately on communities of color,” said Leon Rodriguez, who headed the Office of Civil Rights at Health and Human Services under President Obama. “That’s been an important reminder that bad health outcomes still disproportionately hit communities of color.”
