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Why is it that people from other countries come here for healthcare when their life depends on it? If you need life saving medicine in a timely fashion, the US is the place to have it. Wait times at the VA are horrible, same with Canada, and Scandinavia.

Have you tried socialized medicine? Look at the VA and ask yourself if that’s what you want. Government healthcare is inferior to a market based system in all but one aspect, cost. The government must contain cost by reducing care.

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence - Hitchens. Can you explain the link between a racist cop and negative health outcomes? I can explain higher rates of chronic health conditions due to personal choice like diet and exercise, but I’m unaware of how racism could cause diabetes or high cholesterol. Help me understand this because if I’m not following, there’s a good chance that others are not making this same connection.

You are the one that mentioned lack of safe neighborhoods, in your article. Why is it that these neighborhoods are unsafe? Who exactly is making it unsafe? Who legislates the unsafe areas? In your response you assert that Illinois, New York, and Washington DC have disproportionately high cop interaction and cops shooting African Americans. Do you see a unifying pattern in those states? Who has run those communities for decades? I’m at work but I’d bet the crime rates would normalize (a statistical term) if we removed Chicago and New York. DC is beyond saving, no because if it’s crime but because it’s DC. You didn’t address my main point about African American men committing disproportionate rates of violent assaults, primarily on other African Americans. You assert that these unsafe neighborhoods cause negative health outcomes but I think you fail to adequately address the root problem. The negative outcomes that you correctly identified will never be fixed unless we diagnose the underlying issues. Anecdotally, I was born in and grew up in Chicago. We, as a species, are pattern seeking animals. It’s not Grandma, the group of dads headed to the bears game, not the group of girls playing in the park, or grandpa on his way to the barber that murders people in these communities, it’s not even close. Young men are the ones committing the overwhelming majority of violence, making the neighborhoods unsafe. The big number you’re not seeing is justified shootings, Mr. Brooks in Atlanta was a justified shooting (see Tennessee v Garner), compared to Mr. Floyd who was murdered in cold blood. How many African Americans were unjustifiably shot by police and of those how many police went to jail? I’ll send you the Washington Post in depth analysis that showed there we 9 unjustified African American shootings last year and over half of cops are already in jail. I’ll look at the males in nursing but after work.

It’s frustrating to see people deny the obvious facts regarding who does a disproportionate amount of killing because it’s uncomfortable. No one takes issue that the majority of murder and violent crime is committed by men. Why do people disagree with the numbers regarding murder when it comes to race? There are obviously bad cops and there are some racist cops in the world. But when people conflate Mr. Brooks and Mr. Floyd, I think they lose the argument. Mr. Floyd was murdered by a cop. That cop is rightfully going to prison for the rest of his life. Mr. Brooks actively played a roll in his own death by grabbing a cops weapon. They’re two totally different situations that have nothing in common.

Stacy, I take issue with several points that you’ve made in your article. Both of my points involve your application of disproportionality. You apply rates of COVID vs race and I’m curious if you’re willing to apply that same principle to other aspects of your proposition. You attribute safe neighborhoods as a contributing factor to negative health outcomes. Are you familiar with the FBI & Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) crime data that show most crime is committed by inter-race individuals? If these neighborhoods are unsafe, what specifically would you like to see change to make them safer? To spark the conversation I’d like to offer my opinion, private ownership of firearms is something I’d like abolished. Additionally, are you aware that according to the BJS, of the 11,970 people charged with murder & non-negligent manslaughter in 2018, 6,380 of those were African American? The overwhelming majority of those individuals were male and young. Firearms were the used in the overwhelming majority of the murders. A group that represents ~7% of the population, after all it’s not women that do the majority of the murder, accounts for 53% of the murderers and most of their victims are of the same race. I’m happy to PM you the specific sources for all of the stats I provided. What can be done to make these communities safer? My second issue is with the representation of African Americans in nursing. I’d be curious about the breakdown of African American nurses vs gender. In my experience, I have not seen very many African American men in nursing. They just don’t seem very interested in becoming a nurse. If you took into account that African Americans are 14% of the population (7% African American Females), they would be over represented if you accounted for the complete lack of African American males in nursing. Do you have any ideas on how to get more males, specifically African American males interested in nursing? And again, I’ll tell you what I do to get more people interested in nursing, I’m a volunteer at the local community college and tutor students to get them interested in science & mathematics. The majority of the students I help are poor and of a different race then me. What would you change to get more African Americans, specifically African American males to become interested in nursing?

We don’t have anything remotely close to capitalism in healthcare with Medicare, Medicaid, VHA, and the other government run healthcare programs. I got through school, including dozens of engineering and math courses because I understand mathematics. If we are the worst healthcare system in the world, why do foreigners come to the US for healthcare? That is rich, the younger generation absolutely wants socialism and a fair number want communism. Capitalism has absolutely nothing to do with that. Socialism and communism involve seizing the means of production, to various degrees. Who exactly do you mean by “these people” and what exactly do you mean by “our racism”? I’m no sure how racist you are, but I want nothing to do with your racism. What you’re describing is the soft bigotry of low expectations. You don’t need a gym to be healthy and there are lots of non-African individuals that live in extremely poor conditions. What you’re describing is being poor, not a persons race. It seems that you’re unwilling to place any responsibility on the patient for their health outcomes. If there was demand in an area of a grocery store, someone would build one. If one has not been build, why don’t you put up your own money and solve this problem? This isn’t even English, but I’ll take a crack at this. Most research and development does not come from the government. The US Government owns ~30K patents from its research. Google alone has over 51K patents and that is just one company. Capitalism does make things cheaper. It’s called the economies of scale. Every person not served by the market represents a loss of revenue. The goal of capitalism is to serve everyone at a price they can afford.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to exhibit A of what I'm talking about. Oh, I've only been told this 1,000 times so far. Does anyone mention any of the pre-existing hypertension that leads to higher rates of pre-eclampsia? No, it's much easier to just say "racism". If medical providers were truly racist towards black women, you'd expect to see 4x lower the death rates from black women served by black physicians. Using that same logic, man kill themselves at twice the rate of women, so is society sexist towards men? Hint, no, people are individuals. Again, pre-existing factors explain this much more than systemic systems of structural institutions, "racism". *edit, this just in, bald men have higher rates of COVID and have worse outcomes. Does this mean that the healthcare system is discriminatory towards bald men? No. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/bald-men-higher-risk-severe-case-covid-19-research-finds/ No, I'm not. I don't have to "advocate" for the insane and unfounded ideas of other people. Also, capitalism makes things cheaper and improves quality. It's true of cellphones, cars, computers, and healthcare. Why is South Korea a better place to live than North Korea? Why did East Germany have put up barbed wire to prevent people from escaping to West Germany? Capitalism has lifted the majority of the world out of abject poverty. Have you seen the FBI crime data about is most at risk of being murdered and by whom? That data definitely gets left out of nursing education. And before you go there, I'm a two time Obama voter and I gave money to Hilary for her 2016 campaign.

@barcode120x let me clarify for you. I went into nursing to help people. I didn't go into nursing to be morally lectured about my 'original sin' aka skin color.

I thought I would share with you my experiences as a straight, white, non-political, low 30's - male in nursing. To avoid doxxing myself, I'll just say that I'm in a top 10 student getting my NP. I want to be very clear, I'm not saying men shouldn't go into nursing, I am saying you should understand what you're getting yourself into. Also, these are just my experiences and you could have a totally different experience. I have an undergraduate in computer science and completed an ABSN program because I thought I'd like to work with people. The actual nursing portion of my program was great; fundamentals, pharmacology, and pathophysiology are all important classes to master. Unfortunately these courses represented a minority of the coursework. The majority of the coursework was spent essentially preaching socialism to us under the veneer of "community health" and "ethics". Now I get it, I was a little order when I went into nursing and I have a different perspective. But every single community health or ethics class was about how evil capitalism is and how there should be a government program for everything. Full disclaimer, I voted for Hilary Clinton twice and politics isn't my thing. The bias was so overwhelming and they didn't even try to hide it. I realize that socialism / communism is fashionable with the younger crowd, but I wish I would have learned about actual community health or ethical issues in nursing. Race Issues. Yet another disclaimer, race couldn't mean less to me. We had several lectures and guest seminars from prominent people in campus leadership tell us that it wasn't possible to racist against white people because white people have all the power. It was just ironic because that statement came from a dean at an IVY league school that is a person of color. We had a few students that were obsessed with race. We would be learning about cardiac issues and the medications that you use to treat the conditions. For those that don't know, African Americans typically don't respond well to Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (ARBs) and are typically placed on calcium channel blockers. This one girl in class went on about how it was systemic racism and prior experiences being a slave that causes African Americans to have poor cardiac health. The professor went along with it. To summarize my ABSN experience, I learned that it was never the patients fault for their own poor outcome. The poor outcome was entirely due to being oppressed because of their race or sex; or there isn't a government program available for them to utilize. The lack of a government program to help afford a generic medication that costs less than $5/90 day supply is probably due to racism. I'll post about my experience in NP school later, but as a male I'd be aware of the following before I signed up for nursing school. If I could describe nursing school in one word it would be gynocentric; if you gave me two words, I'd say extreme SJWs.If you are science minded, put in the extra work and go to medical school. Trust me, I have friends that did this and the majority of your time is spent learning actual medicine. I had a semester long "evidence based practice" class where we learned that grounding yourself can improve your mental health. Grounding, as in grounding yourself to an electrical outlet or going barefoot in the grass. I've taken several classes on electricity and magnetism in my undergrad. "Grounding" yourself will do absolutely nothing but we learned pseudo-science instead of medicine. If you are a-political or heaven forbid lean conservative; learn to keep your ideas to yourself. I got much better grades on assignments when I learned how to write like the reincarnation of Karl Marx. Group work can be a very social thing. Group work in computer science focused on results and objective goals, does your code compile? Did your robot fall over and die? Nursing group work is about how people feel about the work. It's less objective and more subjective. Your program will be mostly run by women and very effeminate men. My program has a prom every year. In all fairness, my computer science department would order bunch of kegs once a month for the students. I'm not saying don't go into nursing. Nursing is a great profession and it's very rewarding. If I had to do it over again, I would have taken the additional year and applied to medical school. I'll share more about my experience in NP school so far at another time.