Study finds racial bias in the government’s formula for distributing Covid-19 aid to hospitals

An African-American man being carried into an ambulance on a stretcher. He is aided by two Emergency Medicical Technicians (EMT). Photo from Stat News

The federal government has systematically shortchanged communities with large Black populations in the distribution of billions of dollars in Covid-19 relief aid meant to help hospitals struggling to manage the effects of the pandemic, according to a study published Friday.

The study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the funding inequities resulted from a formula that allocated large chunks of a $175 billion relief package based on hospital revenue, instead of numbers of Covid-19 cases or other health data.

The effect was to distribute more money through the federal CARES Act to large hospitals that already had the most resources, leaving smaller hospitals with large numbers of Black patients with disproportionately low funding to manage higher numbers of Covid-19 cases.

 

Source: https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/07/racial-bias-in-government-covid19-hospital-aid-formula/