Conyers Calls Bush Out on Health Disparities

[paineinthearse]

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Toby Fallsgraff
February 10, 2005 [phone]

Conyers Calls Bush Out on Health Disparities

Washington, D.C. – Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) condemned President Bush today for his budget’s likeliness to increase racial health disparities in America. Conyers further denounced the President’s political posturing to court African-Americans while he repeatedly demonstrates “a lack of understanding of the problems facing the African-American community today.” The Congressman released the following statement:

“Yesterday the new chair of the Republican National Committee told African-Americans that the Republican Party had ‘walked away’ from them and that the Bush administration is now ‘walking back,’ continuing recent Republican attempts to woo minority – particularly African-American – voters. But the President, in his budget proposals, has once again demonstrated a lack of understanding of the problems facing the African-American community today.

It was embarrassing when the President told the Congressional Black Caucus last month that he didn’t ‘know anything about the 1965 Voting Rights Act,’ but the budget he proposed Monday was nothing short of callous.

The President’s budget not only fails to address racial and ethnic health disparities, ignoring the recommendations of both the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Congressional Black Caucus, but it also makes cuts that will certainly inflame these disparities. According to research published last month in the American Journal of Public Health, we could have prevented 886,000 deaths between 1991 and 2000 had African-Americans received the same health care as whites. African-Americans are have cancer rates 25 percent higher than whites, are 11 times more likely to die of HIV-AIDS, and have infant-mortality rates more than twice as high as whites. The HHS released a fact sheet last July that acknowledged and vowed to combat such disparities.

But the research indicates that these gaps are growing larger, and the President is clearly not listening.
His budget makes strident cuts in health care in a way that particularly victimizes minorities, cutting Medicaid by $60 billion and cutting $94 million in grants for the Healthy Communities Access Program (HCAP), a program that increases health-care access in urban and low-income communities. These cuts fly directly in the face of those trying to reduce racial disparities in health.

The President and his party can publicly honor African-Americans during Black History Month; they can continue to say they are ‘walking back’ to minority voters, but this political posturing is not enough. If the President wants to increase his minority support, I suggest he earn it.”
budget.”

###109-2-10-05###

[babsbunny]

1. I LOVE

John Conyers!!!!

[paineinthearse]

2. No Conyers fans today? nt

[FreedomAngel82]

3. I think Conyers is great!

I hope he's successful with this and he made a very good point. Bush can say he respects African-American's all he wants during this month but it's his actions that mean a lot. Go Conyers!

[paineinthearse]

4. .

:thumbsup: