Race Census Aff – mags compiled by Lenny Brahin Jaden Lessnick Jillian Gordners Brian Roche 1AC

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Empirics

Employment

Education

Factually incorrect

Department of Education 2011 ("More Than 40% of Low-Income Schools Don't Get a Fair Share of State and Local Funds, Department of Education Research Finds." More Than 40% of Low-Income Schools Don't Get a Fair Share of State and Local Funds, Department of Education Research Finds. N.p., 30 Nov. 2011. Web. 29 June 2015. http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/more-40-low-income-schools-dont-get-fair-share-state-and-local-funds-department-education-research-finds, LB)

A new report from the U.S. Department of Education documents that schools serving low-income students are being shortchanged because school districts across the country are inequitably distributing their state and local funds. The analysis of new data on 2008-09 school-level expenditures shows that many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and local funding, leaving students in high-poverty schools with fewer resources than schools attended by their wealthier peers. The data reveal that more than 40 percent of schools that receive federal Title I money to serve disadvantaged students spent less state and local money on teachers and other personnel than schools that don't receive Title I money at the same grade level in the same district. "Educators across the country understand that low-income students need extra support and resources to succeed, but in far too many places policies for assigning teachers and allocating resources are perpetuating the problem rather than solving it," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said. "The good news in this report is that it is feasible for districts to address this problem and it will have a significant impact on educational opportunities for our nation's poorest children." In a policy brief that accompanies the report, a Department analysis found that providing low-income schools with comparable spending would cost as little as 1 percent of the average district's total spending. The analysis also found that extra resources would make a big impact by adding as much as between 4 percent and 15 percent to the budget of schools serving high numbers of students who live in poverty. The Title I program is designed to provide extra resources to high-poverty schools to help them meet the greater challenges of educating at-risk students. The law includes a requirement that districts ensure that Title I schools receive "comparability of services" from state and local funds, so that federal funds can serve their intended purpose of supplementing equitable state and local funding. In recent years a growing number of researchers, education advocates, and legislators have highlighted that by not requiring districts to consider actual school-level expenditures in calculating "comparability of services," the existing comparability requirement doesn't address fundamental spending inequities within districts. Instead, districts can show comparability in a number of easier ways, such as by using a districtwide salary schedule. This masks the fact that schools serving disadvantaged students often have less experienced teachers who are paid less. It also undermines the purpose of Title I funding, as districts can use federal funds to fill state and local funding gaps instead of providing additional services to students in poverty. For the study, Education Department researchers analyzed new school-level spending and teacher salary data submitted by more than 13,000 school districts as required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. This school level expenditure data was made available for the first time ever in this data collection.

Your reforms are bad and you should feel bad

Klein 2014 (Rebecca. "Minority Students Don't Only Get Less Experienced Teachers, They Also Get Less Effective Ones." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 11 Apr. 2014. Web. 29 June 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/11/minority-students-worse-teachers_n_5135153.html, LB)

It's already known that low-income students of color generally have less experienced teachers, but a new study from the Center for American Progress reveals they have less effective teachers, too. The Center For American Progress report, released Friday, analyzed the evaluation scores of teachers in low-income and affluent districts in both Massachusetts and Louisiana. Throughout the past few years, states have been incentivized to adopt new teacher evaluation systems through Race To The Top funding. The teacher evaluations in Massachusetts and Louisiana -- two states that are unique in making evaluation scores public -- rate teachers based on measures like student scores on standardized tests and effectiveness during classroom observation sessions. In Louisiana, where teachers are rated as either "ineffective," "effective-emerging," "effective-proficient" or "highly effective," researchers found that “a student in a school in the highest-poverty quartile is almost three times as likely to be taught by a teacher rated ineffective as a student in a school in the lowest-poverty quartile.” The graphic below shows the breakdown of scores: Similarly, students in schools with a high concentration of minorities are more than twice as likely to have an ineffective teacher than students in schools with a low minority enrollment. Massachusetts teachers receive ratings such as "unsatisfactory," "needs improvement," "proficient" or "exemplary." Although Massachusetts has fewer teachers with poor ratings than Louisiana, students in high-poverty schools are three times as likely to be taught by a teacher rated "unsatisfactory" than students in low-poverty schools, the report notes. See the graphic below: Results are similar for schools with a high concentration of minority students. Another Center For American Progress study, also out Friday, analyzed the root causes for what is called the unequal distribution of teachers. The report noted that while No Child Left Behind previously asked states to devise plans that would ensure the equitable distribution of teachers, subsequent waivers gave states flexibility from these requirements. “Regardless of how it is measured, teacher quality is not distributed equitably across schools and districts. Poor students and students of color are less likely to get well-qualified or high-value teachers than students from higher-income families or students who are white,” says the report. Jenny DeMonte, associate director for education research at American Progress, told The Huffington Post that both studies indicate, “we’ve got some work to do.” In order to fix these problems, she said, districts should incentivize effective teachers to work in disadvantaged districts and create mentorship programs that pair effective teachers with struggling ones. “Regardless of how you splice it or measure it, this continues to be something we need to think about. Having an effective teacher is a key driver in whether a student achieves and learns a lot,” DeMonte said.

Government funding hurts the people who need it

Resmovits 2014 (Joy. "American Schools Are STILL Racist, Government Report Finds." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 21 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/21/schools-discrimination_n_5002954.html, LB)

Public school students of color get more punishment and less access to veteran teachers than their white peers, according to surveys released Friday by the U.S. Education Department that include data from every U.S. school district. Black students are suspended or expelled at triple the rate of their white peers, according to the U.S. Education Department's 2011-2012 Civil Rights Data Collection, a survey conducted every two years. Five percent of white students were suspended annually, compared with 16 percent of black students, according to the report. Black girls were suspended at a rate of 12 percent -- far greater than girls of other ethnicities and most categories of boys. At the same time, minority students have less access to experienced teachers. Most minority students and English language learners are stuck in schools with the most new teachers. Seven percent of black students attend schools where as many as 20 percent of teachers fail to meet license and certification requirements. And one in four school districts pay teachers in less-diverse high schools $5,000 more than teachers in schools with higher black and Latino student enrollment. Such discrimination lowers academic performance for minority students and puts them at greater risk of dropping out of school, according to previous research. The new research also shows the shortcomings of decades of legal and political moves to ensure equal rights to education. The Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling banned school segregation and affirmed the right to quality education for all children. The 1964 Civil Rights Act guaranteed equal access to education. "This data collection shines a clear, unbiased light on places that are delivering on the promise of an equal education for every child and places where the largest gaps remain," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement. "In all, it is clear that the United States has a great distance to go to meet our goal of providing opportunities for every student to succeed." Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder plan to announce the survey results on Friday. The information, part of an ongoing survey by the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights, highlights longstanding inequities in how schools leave minority students and students with disabilities at a disadvantage. For the first time since 2000, the new version of the survey includes results from all 16,500 American school districts, representing 49 million students. "Unfortunately, too many children don’t have equitable access to experienced and fully licensed teachers, as has again been proven by the data in this report," said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union. "This is a problem that can and must be addressed." Daria Hall, K-12 policy director at the Education Trust, an advocacy group, also called for action. "The report shines a new light on something that research and experience have long told us -- that students of color get less than their fair share of access to the in-school factors that matter for achievement," she said. "Students of color get less access to high level courses. Black students in particular get less instructional time because they're far more likely to receive out of school suspensions or expulsions. And students of color get less access to teachers who've had at least a year on the job and who have at least basic certification. Of course, it's not enough to just shine a light on the problem. We have to fix it." Though 16 percent of America's public school students are black, they represent 27 percent of students referred by schools to law enforcement, and 31 percent of students arrested for an offense committed in school, according to the survey.

Fair housing

Wow this is racist

Coates 2014 (Ta-Nehisi. "The Racist Housing Policies That Built Ferguson." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 17 Oct. 2014. Web. 29 June 2015. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/the-racist-housing-policies-that-built-ferguson/381595/, LB)

That governmental actions, not mere private prejudice, were responsible for segregating greater St. Louis was once conventional informed opinion. In 1974, a three-judge panel of the federal Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that “segregated housing in the St. Louis metropolitan area was … in large measure the result of deliberate racial discrimination in the housing market by the real estate industry and by agencies of the federal, state, and local governments.” Similar observations accurately describe every other large metropolitan area; in St. Louis, the Department of Justice stipulated to this truth but took no action in response. In 1980, a federal court order included an instruction for the state, county, and city governments to devise plans to integrate schools by integrating housing. Public officials ignored this aspect of the order, devising only a voluntary busing plan to integrate schools, but no programs to combat housing segregation. A lot of what's here—redlining, housing covenants, blockbusting, etc.—will be well-known to those with a good handle on 20th-century American history. I focused on this particular era in my case for reparations. But it bears constant repeating: The geography of America would be unrecognizable today without the racist social engineering of the mid-20th century. The policy included—but was not limited to—mortgage loans backed by the Federal Housing Authority and the Veteran's Administration: At its peak in 1943 when civilian construction was limited, the FHA financed 80 percent of all private home construction nationwide. During the postwar period, it dropped to one-third. But even when subdivisions were not built with advance FHA commitments, individual homebuyers needed access to FHA or VA insured mortgages, so similar standards for new construction pertained. Subdivisions throughout St. Louis County were developed in this way, with FHA advance commitments for the builders and a resulting whites-only sale policy. The FHA’s suburban whites-only policy continued through the postwar housing boom that lasted through the mid-1960s. In 1947, the FHA sanitized its manual, removing literal race references but still demanding “compatibility among neighborhood occupants” for mortgage guarantees. “Neighborhoods constituted of families that are congenial,” the FHA manual explained, “… generally exhibit strong appeal and stability.” This very slightly sanitized language suggested no change in policy, and the FHA continued to finance builders with open policies of racial exclusion for another 15 years. In 1959, the United States Commission on Civil Rights concluded that only 2 percent of all FHA-backed loans had gone to blacks. "Most of this housing," concluded the report, "has been in all-Negro developments in the South." As it relates to black America, segregation must always be understood, as a system of plunder. Once the big game has been fenced off, then comes the hunt: According to a study by the St. Louis nonprofit Better Together, Ferguson receives nearly one-quarter of its revenue from court fees; for some surrounding towns it approaches 50 percent. Municipal reliance on revenue generated from traffic stops adds pressure to make more of them. One town, Sycamore Hills, has stationed a radar-gun-wielding police officer on its 250-foot northbound stretch of Interstate. With primarily white police forces that rely disproportionately on traffic citation revenue, blacks are pulled over, cited and arrested in numbers far exceeding their population share, according to a recent report from Missouri’s attorney general. In Ferguson last year, 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches and 93 percent of arrests were of black people—despite the fact that police officers were far less likely to find contraband on black drivers (22 percent versus 34 percent of whites). This worsens inequality, as struggling blacks do more to fund local government than relatively affluent whites.

Fair for whom?

Cohen 2015 (Rachel. "We Can't Talk About Housing Policy Without Talking About Racism." The American Prospect. N.p., 19 May 2015. Web. 29 June 2015. http://prospect.org/article/we-cant-talk-about-housing-policy-without-talking-about-racism, LB)

A case in point is HUD’s Clinton-era Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program, the subject of a new study by Harvard economists Raj Chetty, Nathan Hendren, and Lawrence Katz. Focusing on MTO’s long-term economic impacts, the study sheds more positive light on a program long considered to be a failure. Running from 1994 to 1998, MTO was a housing experiment that involved moving individuals out of high-poverty neighborhoods with vouchers and into census-tracts with less than 10 percent poverty to see if this would improve their life outcomes. The results were mixed. While critics of the program have dubbed it a failure for not significantly improving children’s school performance or the financial situation of their parents, there was a lot about it that proved successful. MTO yielded significant gains in mental health for adults, for instance, including decreased stress levels and lower rates of depression. It also greatly lowered obesity rates and improved the psychological well being of young girls. The new Harvard study further bucks the notion that MTO failed. Instead of looking at MTO’s economic impact on parents, it looks at the adult earnings of their children. Such an analysis simply wasn’t possible to do a decade ago, given that the kids were still too young. Researchers now find that poor children who moved into better neighborhoods were more likely to attend college and earned significantly more in the workforce than similar adults who never moved. The researchers also ranked which cities were “the worst” in terms of facilitating upward mobility. Out of the nation’s 100 largest counties, the authors found, Baltimore came in dead last. Many writers were quick to make the connection between Baltimore’s low chances for social mobility and the recent bouts of unrest surrounding the death of Baltimore’s Freddie Gray. However, few seemed interested in connecting the new Harvard study with the politics of why we have segregated communities and concentrated poverty in the first place. Emily Badger’s Washington Post write-up of the study framed the ills people face in Baltimore as a city failure, rather than a state or federal one. She discusses the “downward drag that Baltimore exerts on poor kids” and says that Baltimore “itself appears to be acting on poor children, constraining their opportunity, molding them over time into the kind of adults who will likely remain poor.” Badger acknowledges that maybe this has to do with struggling schools and less social capital. “Change where these children live, though,” she writes, “and you might well change their outcomes.” In The Wall Street Journal, Holman W. Jenkins Jr. looks at the new Harvard study and concludes: “Neighborhoods themselves are clearly transmitters of poverty. The problem for residents isn’t racism: It’s where they live.” Such narrow portrayals of Baltimore and its residents are only possible if we exclude decades of state and federal policy from our frame of analysis. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute wrote something I suggest reading in its entirety. But to quote: In Baltimore and elsewhere, the distressed condition of African American working- and lower-middle-class families is almost entirely attributable to federal policy that prohibited black families from accumulating housing equity during the suburban boom that moved white families into single-family homes from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s—and thus from bequeathing that wealth to their children and grandchildren, as white suburbanites have done. Slate’s Jamelle Bouie traces not only how efforts to segregate Baltimore succeeded, but also how there’s never been a sustained attempt to undo them. The simple fact is that major progress in Baltimore—and other, similar cities—requires major investment and major reform from state and federal government. It requires patience, investment, and a national commitment to ending scourges of generational poverty—not just ameliorating them.

Health care

Laundry list of disparities in treatment

Health care is racist

1. barriers to hospitals

Randall 1993 (Vernellia, prof of law @ the university of dayton "Racist Health Care." Racism.org. N.p., 1993. Web. 29 June 2015. http://www.racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1424%3Aracisthealthcare&catid=88&Itemid=274&showall=&limitstart=3, LB)

1. Barriers to Hospitals The institutional racism that exists in many hospitals manifests itself in a number of ways including the adoption, administration and implementation of policies that restrict admission; the closure, relocation or privatization of hospitals that serve the African-American community; and the transfer of unwanted patients (known as “patient dumping”) by hospitals and institutions. ADMISSION RESTRICTIONS. Many hospitals discriminate by using patient referral and acceptance practice standards that limit access. These practices restrict the admission of African-Americans to hospitals. Discriminatory admission practices include: • Layoffs of recently hired African-American physicians - where those African-American physicians admit most of the African-American patients served by the hospital; • Not having physicians on staff who can accept Medicaid patients; • Requiring pre-admission deposits as a condition of obtaining care; • Refusing to participate in programs to finance care for low-income patients not eligible for Medicaid; and, • Accepting only patients of physicians with staff privileges when the patients of such physicians do not reflect the racial composition of the local community. Such practices may have a devastating effect on African-Americans. The practices may banish African-Americans to distinctly substandard institutions treating mostly minority groups. They may completely prevent care where African-Americans have no access to other sources of care. COMMUNITY AVAILABILITY. Racial barriers to health care access are based, in large part, on the unavailability of services in a community. Increasingly, hospitals that serve the African-American community are either closing, relocating or becoming private. In a study done between 1937-1977, researchers showed that the likelihood of a hospital's closing was directly related to the percentage of African-Americans in the population. Throughout the 1980s many hospitals relocated from heavily African-American communities to predominantly European-American suburban communities. This loss of services to the community resulted in reduced access to African-Americans. Geographic availability and proximity are important determinants to seeking health care services early. If African-Americans fail to seek early health care, they are more likely to be sicker when they do enter the system; and the cost for the patient to receive service and for the system to provide services at that point is likely to be greater than at an earlier state. Therefore, not only does the loss of services significantly increase health care costs to African-Americans, but also, it increases health care costs to the society in general. Another devastating trend that affects the access of African-Americans to health care is the privatization of public hospitals. Quite a few hospitals (public and non-profit) have elected to restructure as private, for-profit corporations. As public hospitals, many were obligated to provide uncompensated care under the Hill-Burton Act. As private hospitals, these institutions are most likely to discontinue providing general health services to the indigent populations, and essential primary health care services to serve African-American communities. The problem of limited resources is not new and has plagued the African-American community since slavery. Historically, African-American communities attempted to address the problem by establishing African-American hospitals. At one point there were more than 200 African-American hospitals in the United States. African-Americans relied on these institutions to “heal and save their lives.” Now, these institutions are fighting for their own survival. By the 1960s, only 90 African-American hospitals remained. Between 1961 and 1988, 57 African-American hospitals closed and 14 others either merged, converted or consolidated. By 1991, only 12 hospitals continued to “struggle daily just to keep their doors open”. As a result of closures, relocations, and privatization, many African-Americans are left with limited, if any, access to hospitals. PATIENT DUMPING. An African-American seeking care at a private hospital faces the possibility of being “dumped”, that is, the hospital may transfer an “undesirable” patient to a different facility. The transfer is medically appropriate only when the care required is not available at the transferring hospital. However, many transfers are for economic reasons, i.e., the patient was either uninsured or unable to make admission deposits. African-Americans are disproportionately affected by these practices.

2. barriers to nursing homes

Randall 1993 (Vernellia, prof of law @ the university of dayton "Racist Health Care." Racism.org. N.p., 1993. Web. 29 June 2015. http://www.racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1424%3Aracisthealthcare&catid=88&Itemid=274&showall=&limitstart=3, LB)

2. Barriers to Nursing Homes Nursing homes are the most segregated publicly licensed health care facilities in the United States. Smith, in his study, concludes that racial discrimination is the major factor explaining that type of segregation. It has been suggested that any difference in African-American use of nursing homes can be explained by cultural biases against using nursing homes as care source for disabled or aged family members. However, in some areas (such as Delaware and Detroit Metropolitan) African-Americans make up a higher portion of nursing home residents than European-Americans. This suggests that African-Americans do not consistently decide against nursing homes. Furthermore, even where racially neutral policies exist, institutional racism is still a factor. For instance, evidence about the use of nursing homes under Medicaid demonstrates that institutional racism has an impact even without regard to economic class. For instance, although African-Americans constitute only 12% of the nation's total population, the African-American poverty rate (31%) is three times greater than the European-American poverty rate (10%). However, African-Americans constitute only 29% of the Medicaid population and 23% of the elderly poor. Medicaid expenditures for African-Americans are only 18% of total expenditures. If, indeed, African-Americans are sicker, then Medicaid expenditures for African-Americans should at least be equal to, if not greater than, the percentage of Medicaid's African-American population. It is this combination of under-representation and under-spending in Medicaid that suggests racism. In part, this disparity in expenditure is based on the limited access that African-Americans on Medicaid have to nursing homes, both intermediate and skilled nursing facilities. Only 10% of Medicaid intermediate care patients are African-Americans. Similarly, only 9% of Medicaid skilled nursing care facilities' patients are African-Americans. This disparity may be due in part to a policy allowing limited bed certification. Under limited bed certification, nursing homes determine the number of beds that are certified to participate in Medicaid. Federal regulations permit a distinct part of intermediate care facilities to be certified. Some states will certify a limited number of beds. Thus, the certified portion of a facility need not contain all intermediate care facilities residents. Furthermore, some states will certify beds which are not in a separately administered unit of a facility, but are instead part of a wing or ward that also contains non-certified beds. Limited bed certification programs allow nursing home operators to give preference to private pay patients by reserving for their exclusive use beds which are unavailable to Medicaid patients. It also allows the nursing home operators to change the bed certification, resulting in disruption of the care of Medicaid patients by displacing them after they have been admitted to a nursing home. Displacement can occur in several ways. It occurs when a patient exhausts his or her financial resources. The patient needs to make a transition from private pay to Medicaid. At that point, a patient may be told that his or her bed is no longer available. Furthermore, displacement occurs when a patient with insurance (private, medicaid or medicare) is transferred from a skilled nursing facility to an intermediate care facility. If the insurance will not cover intermediate care, the patient may not have financial resources to continue obtaining nursing home care. Similarly, displacement can occur when a patient already on Medicaid and authorized to receive skilled nursing care is reclassified for intermediate care only

3. barriers to physicians

3. Barriers to Physicians and Other Providers Another important aspect of access to care is the availability of health care providers who serve the African-American communities. It should go without saying that proximity increases utilization. At this point, data on the actual numbers of white physicians who have offices in the African-American community are not available. There are probably very few. Consequently, African-American physicians have been an important aspect of filling the availability gap. Without physicians and providers in their communities, African-Americans are likely to delay seeking health care. That delay can result in more severe illness, increased health care cost, increased mortality and increased costs to society. Given the increased morbidity and mortality among African-Americans logically one would expect more health care providers in their communities not fewer, and more African-Americans in health care fields. Scrutiny of the physicians heading in the Yellow Pages of any major city, clearly indicates that many physicians do not physically serve the African-American community. Furthermore, despite being 12% of the population, African-Americans are seriously under-represented in health care professions. Only 3% of the physicians in the United States are African-Americans; only 2.5% of the dentists in the United States are African-Americans; and only 3.6% of the United States pharmacists are African-Americans. While this lack of representation is particularly significant for African-American communities which rely on African-American physicians for care, it also impacts the entire community. Shortage of adequate care results in sicker individuals and an increase in overall health care costs. If African-Americans are sicker, they need more physicians, not fewer. Yet, we see the same limited availability of providers, as of hospitals, to service African-American communities. The shortage of African-American professionals further affects health care availability by limiting African-American input into the health care system. While the control of health care distribution is ultimately in the hands of the individual physician, that control is influenced and limited by law, hospital practices and policies, and the medical organization of the physician's practice. With so few African-American health care professionals, the control of the health care system lies almost exclusively in European-American hands. The result is an inadequate, if not ineffective, voice on African-American health care issues. This lack of African-American voice leads to increased ignorance on the part of European-Americans regarding issues pertaining to African-American health. When health care issues are defined, the policy makers' ignorance results in their overlooking African-Americans' health concerns.

Health care is awful

1. We Spend the Most Money on Health Care, But Get the Least in Return

Merola 2014 (Joseph, phd – works at st. alexius’s medical center, "Top 10 Ways the American Health Care System Fails."Mercola.com. N.p., 15 Mar. 2014. Web. 29 June 2015. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/03/15/bad-american-health-care-system.aspx, LB)

The US spends more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Australia, yet the US ranks last in health and mortality when compared with 17 other developed nations. Sadly, 30 cents of every dollar spent on medical care in America is wasted, which amounts to $750 billion annually. That is the same amount the Department of Defense estimates we spent on the ENTIRE Iraq War! This $750 billion of waste is made up of inefficient delivery of care and excessive administrative costs, unnecessary services, inflated prices, prevention failures, and outright fraud. The largest defrauder of the federal government is the pharmaceutical industry.7 Thirty-five percent of Americans have difficulty paying their medical bills,8 and nearly two-thirds of all bankruptcies are linked to inability to pay medical bills due to being uninsured or underinsured. Medical impoverishment is nearly unheard of in wealthy nations, other than the US, because all have some form of national health insurance.9 By dissecting medical bills, Time Magazine writer Steven Brill says we can see exactly how and why you are overspending and where your money is going. Americans are being grossly overcharged; even nonprofit hospitals are making greater profits than some prosperous for-profit businesses. The entire system unfairly affects the poor and uninsured as they are charged the FULL inflated price, while those with coverage have their costs radically reduced through pre-negotiated lowered rates. How much will you spend for a hospital stay? Certainly more than you would pay for even the most extravagant vacation! The average cost of a hospital say is $18,000, compared to $6,200 among OECD nations, according to this George Washington University infographic.10 Things add up quickly when you're in an American hospital. For example, a liter of normal saline rings up at $546.11 This one-liter bag of saline contains about nine grams of salt (less than two teaspoons), which costs 44 cents to a dollar to produce. But then the bag makes its way from the manufacturer through a series of giant group-purchasing middlemen and distributors before arriving at your hospital's pharmacy. Upon arrival, that IV bag has a mystery formula applied to it, and a price is magically determined, which is then recorded on your hospital's "chargemaster." No one really understands how these prices are calculated. Only recently did the federal government release the prices that hospitals charge for the 100 most common medical procedures, revealing tremendous and seemingly random variation in the costs of services.12 For example, if you need a hip replacement, you can spend $5,300 in Ada, Oklahoma, or you can fork over $223,000 for exactly the same procedure in Monterrey Park, California.13 You can find out how your state compares in average fees for service using an interactive online chart created by the Washington Post.14

2. Our Chronic Disease Rates Are Extraordinarily High

Americans have the second highest rate of chronic disease of the seven countries examined, with Australia being number one. With all of the money we're spending, what are we missing? This statistic reflects poor preventative care and lack of attention to lifestyle habits, such as diet, exercise, stress, sleep, and "electron deficiency" (insufficient contact with the Earth). The majority of Americans (adults and children) are becoming insulin-resistant due to their junk food based diets, loaded withsugar, processed grains, and chemical additives. Insulin dysfunction is putting many in a state of perpetual inflammation and driving up the rates of chronic disease. Americans consume nearly 4,000 calories per day on average—more than anyone else in the world.15 Yet, they are malnourished because most of these calories are from processed food, therefore devoid of nutrition.

3. Poor Coordination of Care

This issue is tied to the problem of waste. We drop the ball when it comes to managing patient care, especially if you have a complicated illness requiring multiple providers. As a result, we have poor access to medical records, duplicate testing, gaps in communication, confidentiality violations, and rushed and fragmented health care. According to an infographic based on data from multiple sources, created by Jonathan Govette:16 3 out of 10 lab tests are reordered because the results can't be found 68 percent of specialists receive no information from the primary care provider prior to the referral visit; 60 to 70 percent of referrals go unscheduled; and 25 percent of appointments are missed 7,000 people die every year from sloppy physician handwriting

4. Most Americans Do Not Have a Primary Care Provider

One of the reasons Americans' health care is so poorly managed is that they are least likely to have primary care providers. There are 0.5 general physicians per 1,000 people in the US, but the average among OECD nations is 1.23.17 Americans are also the most likely to say that their physician doesn't know important information about their medical history, which has dire implications for quality of care and increases the likelihood of medical errors. And, speaking of errors...

5. Americans Are the Most Frequent Victims of Medical Errors

It can be argued that medical errors are leading cause of death in the US—higher than heart disease, higher than cancer. The latest review shows that about 1,000 people die EVERY DAY from hospital mistakes alone. This equates to four jumbo jets' worth of passengers every week, but the death toll is largely ignored. Types of errors include inappropriate medical treatments, hospital-acquired infections, unnecessary surgeries, adverse drug reactions, operating on the wrong body part—or even on the wrong patient! One in four hospital patients are harmed by preventable medical mistakes in this country, and 800,000 people die every year as a result. Of those 800,000, 250,000 die as a result of medication errors.

6. Fewer Americans Are Receiving Health Care

Americans do have shorter waits for non-elective surgeries, compared with other developed nations. Only four percent of us wait more than six months, which is considerably less than the Canadians (14 percent) or Britons (15 percent). However, when you consider how many Americans lack access to any health care at all, the wait-time advantage disappears. Nearly one-third of Americans are uninsured or underinsured.19 Twenty-five percent do not visit a doctor when they're sick, due to the cost. Twenty-three percent can't fill their prescriptions. This is far worse in America than in any of the other countries surveyed. In Canada, only five percent skipped care, and in the UK only three percent. As you know, I'm not a fan of using the standard health care approach in every situation. However, if you become acutely ill or injured, lack of access to care can be devastating.

7. We Don't Pay Physicians in Proportion to Their Quality of Care

8. Our Health Care Is Inconvenient

9. American Physicians Don't Listen to Their Patients

About 70 percent of Americans are satisfied with their physician's "bedside manner," which is lower than the Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders. But we are five percent more satisfied than the Britons, and well above the Germans or Dutch. However, when you look at specifics, we compare less favorably. Americans are less happy about how well their physicians explain things to them, how long they spend with them, or how smoothly their appointments go, with respect to things like coordinating records and scheduling.

10. Most Americans Are Dissatisfied with the Current System

You've probably heard reports claiming that Britons and Canadians are highly dissatisfied with their health care system, but this survey proved that Americans have them beat by a substantial margin. Americans were the least likely of all seven countries to report relative satisfaction with their health care system. Only 16 percent of Americans report being happy, compared with 26 percent in the UK and 42 percent in the Netherlands. Thirty-four percent of Americans want a complete overhaul in the health care system, whereas only 12 percent of Canadians and 15 percent of Britons say the same. So we pay the most for our health care, but we have the lowest satisfaction ratings—even lower than those who spend more time "waiting in line." Ezra Klein of the Washington Post makes an excellent point "There is no other area of American life where we collectively accept such a bad deal. We spend more than any other nation on our military, but our military is unquestionably the mightiest in the world. We spend the most on our universities, but our universities are the best on the planet. But we spend the most on our health care—twice as much as anyone else—and our health system is mediocre-to-poor, with 47 million of us lacking the insurance necessary to easily access it."

Poverty

Government makes poverty alleviation ineffective

Chartier 2012 (Gary. "Government Is No Friend of the Poor." : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education. N.p., 4 Jan. 2012. Web. 29 June 2015. http://fee.org/freeman/detail/government-is-no-friend-of-the-poor, LB)

For instance: Governments don’t treat recipients of the antipoverty aid they disburse especially well. It’s important to avoid comparing idealized State practice with imaginary worst-case practice in the government’s absence. If we focus on actual government practice we find that poor people are not served particularly well by the State, which routinely intrudes into the lives of recipients of assistance, violating their privacy and seeking to regulate their behavior. People pay a high price for aid from the State. Government aid programs come with hidden price tags. And governments increase the number of poor people in part precisely through some antipoverty programs, which can create perverse incentives both for people to remain poor enough to qualify for government funds and for bureaucrats to keep people poor in order to retain their own jobs. Governments raise the cost of being poor. Building codes and zoning regulations raise the cost of housing and so make it harder for people to find inexpensive homes. Some people are forced to live without permanent housing at all, while others must spend much larger fractions of their incomes on housing than they otherwise would. As for food, that’s also more expensive thanks to agricultural tariffs and import quotas. In the absence of government policies that make meeting their basic needs unnecessarily expensive, poor people would have more disposable income and would be more economically secure. More than that, though, governments actively take money from poor people. Many poor people pay more in taxes than they get back in services under the State’s rule. These people would have more resources on net in the absence of the State’s demand for tax money. In addition many people are poor, or poorer, today because the State has actively stolen land and other resources from them or their ancestors or has sanctioned such thefts committed by the wealthy and well-connected. (Think eminent domain among other methods.) Historically the existence of a peasant class and of a class of displaced urban workers willing to accept employment on dismal terms is inexplicable without reference to State violence or State tolerance for or endorsement of violence by the wealthy and well-connected. The government raises the cost of obtaining key goods and services. The State does a range of things (notably requiring professional licenses, hospital accreditation, and prescriptions and enforcing drug and medical device patents, and other restraints on trade) to make particular services such as health care especially expensive. All these different factors fit together, each one making people’s conditions worse than they’d otherwise be and making the effects of the other factors more severe. People often start out with less money because of large-scale past injustices. They have less money now because of government limitations on the kind of work they can do and where they can do it. Their ability to provide decent lives for themselves and their families is further limited because the government raises the cost of living, and government regulation of the economy drives down the overall level of productivity even further in ways that obviously hurt the poor the most.

Race data doesn’t help with federal public assistance distribution

Timoll 99 (Jason Timoll, “Race and Welfare: The Unspoken Variable” 1999. http://www2.wlu.edu/documents/shepherd/academics/cap_03L_timoll.pdf) JG

In order to analyze racial discrimination in the∂ distribution of government welfare benefits, one must∂ establish whether or not such problems exists, whether and∂ how they may be documented, whether the problem is isolated∂ to rogue actors or representative of a policy trends and∂ what causes the problems that may be found.∂ In analyzing the effects of race on the distribution∂ of public assistance, my focus is on the inadequacy of∂ current welfare anti-discrimination policies. I will∂ attempt to discern from the available data, clear and∂ consistent patterns of discriminatory abuse, as∂ distinguished from subjective criticism of patterns of∂ distribution. Further, I will suggest ways in which states∂ and the Federal government can promote more equitable∂ distributions of welfare benefits and services to all∂ races.∂ II. How Race Discrimination Can Be Identified. ∂ 2∂ Welfare allocations, in theory, ought to be needbased.∂ Analyses of need ought to incorporate factors such∂ a family’s size, structure and income level. Welfare∂ recipients currently enrolled in a state “workfare” program∂ may be considered, under, state and federal laws,∂ “employees” and may thus protected by applicable civil rights and labor laws. However, distribution of welfare can often allow for subjective factors to play a role in analyses. This subjectivity may be hard enough to detect∂ in substantive dollar allocations and even harder within∂ programs that are established to offer educational and∂ employment advice, encouragement and direction. Largely∂ because any disparities may be hard to explain or account∂ for, federal data collection agencies may not have an∂ urgent vested interest in compiling and analyzing data that∂ would appear to give a clearer insight into the effects of∂ race upon the distribution of welfare benefits. The results∂ of this data may reveal embarrassing trends that may be∂ politically difficult to explain and remedy.∂ A study conducted by Elizabeth Lower-Basch, Office of∂ the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the∂ Department of Health and Human Services, has isolated∂ several areas in which race disparities may appear. They∂ include the number of families receiving AFDC/TANF (by ∂ 3∂ race), distribution of AFDC/TANF (by race), and various∂ indicators of success regarding welfare “leavers” (by∂ race). Most of the following statistics are not self explanatory∂ as to why they are different by race but do∂ point out significant gaps among them. The proportional changes in poverty rates among the∂ races, as indicated above suggest the possibility that∂ government programs designed to combat poverty are not∂ having the same effects across racial lines. Further, this∂ suggestion may be compounded when accounting for the actual∂ number of people within the racial categories that fall∂ below the poverty line as compared to the rate of change∂ regarding their welfare status. The chart bellow indicates∂ an overall decrease in families receiving welfare benefits∂ from the period of 1985 to 1999. This trend was given a∂ large surge largely attributable to The Personal∂ Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act∂ (PWRORA) of 1996 signed by President Bill Clinton. From∂ 1996 to 1999 there does appear to be a widening gap that∂ has remained in place, between the number of black welfare∂ leavers and white welfare leavers. Like so many of these∂ charts and studies, it is not clear what the underlying ∂ 5∂ problem is. This illustration, however, clearly∂ demonstrates that the effectiveness of welfare policy has∂ not been realized by racial groups equally. The number of∂ white recipient families is shown to be declining more∂ rapidly (50.6%) than their Black counterparts at (39.6%).∂ While there is an 11% reduction difference, it may be∂ indicative of a larger trend.∂

Redistricting

Voting rights

People don’t have a say in voting rn

Alcoff 3 (Linda Alcoff, professor of philosophy at CUNY, “LATINO/AS, ASIAN AMERICANS, AND THE BLACK-WHITE BINARY”, The Journal of Ethics 7: 5–27, 2003, LB)

If W.E.B. DuBois were alive today, he would probably tell us that the problem of the twenty-first century will prove to be the lines between communities of color, or the question of cross ethnic relations.1 In the 2000 United States presidential election, the voting bloc for candidate Al Gore consisted of a majority in each of the following groups: every minority ethnic group, white women, and union households. This coalition actually constitutes a slim majority of the population, and thus its unity is potentially a powerful force. However, U.S. presidential elections are of course not determined by the popular vote but by the electoral college, a procedure that not only has the power to overturn the popular vote nationwide but, even more importantly, the urban vote, which now carries the majority of the population and is increasing. If we eliminated the electoral college the urban population would therefore determine the presidency, which would mean real enfranchisement for people of color for the first time in U.S. history. It is unlikely that the electoral college will be eliminated anytime soon, but even if this were to happen, political power for people of color would require building coalitions, the difficulty of which has been brought home by recent city government elections in New York and Los Angeles. This paper is an attempt to make a contribution toward coalition building by showing that, even if we try to build coalition around what might look like our most obvious common concern - reducing racism - the dominant discourse of racial politics in the U.S. inhibits an understanding of how racism operates vis-a-vis Latino/as and Asian Americans, and thus proves more of an obstacle to coalition building than an aid. First and foremost, of course, we must begin to talk more with one another. There are many important similarities between the history of oppression specifically faced by Latino/as and Asian Americans in the U.S. Histori cally, both groups were often brought to this country as cheap labor and then denied certain political and civil rights, thus making them a more vulnerable and exploitable labor force once on U.S. shores (a practice that continues to this day in sweatshops in many cities on the east and west coasts and on the U.S.-Mexican border, and in the erosion of even basic protections or emergency hospital services for "illegals").2 And both groups are often coming from countries of origin that have been the site of imperialist wars, invasions, and civil wars instigated by the cold war, some of which involved the U.S.'s own imperialist aggressions such as in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Korea, the Dominican Republic, and most recently, Colombia.3 In this sense, many of these immigrants had experience with the U.S. Government, direct or indirect, well before they became refugees or immigrants there. There are also similarities that Latino/as and Asian Americans share with other people of color after they go there: having to continually face vicious and demeaning stereotyping along with language, education, health care, housing and employment discrimination, and being the target of random identity based violence and murder (random only in the sense that any Mexican farm laborer or Asian American or Arab American or African American or Jewish person would do). the U.S. Government, direct or indirect, well before they became refugees or immigrants there. There are also similarities that Latino/as and Asian Americans share with other people of color after they go there: having to continually face vicious and demeaning stereotyping along with language, education, health care, housing and employment discrimination, and being the target of random identity based violence and murder (random only in the sense that any Mexican farm laborer or Asian American or Arab American or African American or Jewish person would do). Perhaps because of their similar genealogy as sources of cheap, easily exploitable labor, there are also some important commonalities between the ideological justifications and legal methods that have been used to persecute and discriminate against Latino/as and Asian Americans.4 Both have been the main victims of "nativist" arguments which advocate limiting the rights of immigrants or foreign-born Americans, and both have often been portrayed as ineradicably "foreign" no matter how many gener ations they have lived here. Yet an account of these nativist-based forms of discrimination and persecution has not been adequately

Institutional racism disproves – their author

LCEF 14 (Leadership conference education fund, http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/Census-Report-2014-WEB.pdf, 6/29/15, LB)

While there was a flurry of reform regarding disenfranchisement of formerly incarcerated individuals in the years following the 2000 election, the reforms have stalled and, in some cases, the process has gone into reverse. In 2005, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack issued an executive order automatically restoring voting rights to all people who were formerly incarcerated for felony convictions. Six years later, his successor Terry Branstad nullified the reform.82 In March 2011, former Florida Governor Crist’s attempts to streamline the re-enfranchisement process were ended by his successor, Rick Scott.83 Recently, there have been efforts in two states to re-enfranchise a segment of the formerly incarcerated population. In both Delaware and Virginia, lawmakers have made it easier for nonviolent offenders to regain their voting rights upon completion of their criminal convictions. While these efforts are noteworthy and progressive, much more reform is needed to significantly reduce the numbers of disenfranchised individuals. Today, approximately a dozen states still have some form of permanent disenfranchisement on the books. Because each state in the United States has established its own laws with regard to the deprivation of the right to vote after a criminal conviction, what has resulted is a patchwork of laws throughout the country. (See Figure 1) In brief:

Thirty-five states prohibit voting by persons who are on parole but not incarcerated; 30 deny voting rights to persons on felony probation.
Eleven states restrict the rights of persons who have completed their sentences in their entirety; and formerly incarcerated persons in those 11 states make up about 45 percent of the entire disenfranchised population, totaling more than 2.6 million people.
Four states deprive all people with a criminal conviction of the right to vote unless pardoned by the governor, irrespective of the gravity of the crime or if the sentence has been served.
In America’s 11 permanent disenfranchisement states, even after the completion of a probation sentence or completion of a prison sentence followed by parole, an individual can’t vote without extraordinary intervention from political leaders. In Mississippi, that intervention involves the legislature passing a bill to personally re-enfranchise an individual, while in Florida it involves the governor signing off on clemency papers.84

The racial aspect of disenfranchisement makes this unjust situation even worse. Since the late 1990s, as the legacy of mass incarceration collided with permanent disenfranchisement laws, in some states in the Deep South, upwards of one quarter of Black men are disenfranchised.⁸⁵ In 2012, sociologists Christopher Uggen, Sarah Shannon, and Jeff Manza estimated that 5.8 million felons and ex-felons are currently barred from voting. Nationally, one out of every 13 African-American men are disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than for non African-American men. In total, nearly 7.7 percent of the African-American population is disenfranchised compared to 1.8 percent of the non African-American population.⁸⁶

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