By Harry Painter
Legislation to ban race-based mandates in medical schools has been introduced in both houses of Congress.
U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, M.D. (R-NC) and Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) introduced identical versions of the Embracing anti-Discrimination, Unbiased Curricula, and Advancing Truth in Education (EDUCATE) Act (H.R. 7725/S. 4115) in the House of Representatives and Senate, on March 19 and April 11, respectively.
The legislation would cut off federal funds, including student loans, to any medical schools that “force students or faculty to adopt specific beliefs, discriminate based on race or ethnicity, or have diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices or any functional equivalent,” states Murphy’s press release on the bill.
The EDUCATE Act would stem the “dangerous” DEI ideology in medical schools, Murphy and Stanley Goldfarb, M.D., chairman of the nonprofit policy organization Do No Harm and former associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania medical school, wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
DEI Is ‘Un-American’
There is “no valid scientific basis” for implementing DEI in health care, Goldfarb told Health Care News.
“In the past, medical schools provided education on patient communication, some of the social issues involved in health care, and resources available to patients that have difficulty in getting transport to the hospital or outpatient visits or other issues related to either frailty or to poverty,” said Goldfarb. “This sufficed to prepare students to enter clinical practice.”
DEI standards assume that medical providers should mirror the characteristics of their patients, says Goldfarb.
“The fact that the country has had changing demographic characteristics does not require perfect representation of those demographic characteristics in the health care workforce,” said Goldfarb. “Moreover, to try to match patients and physicians based on race or ethnicity is not only impossible but un-American.”
Racism in Health Care?
Proponents of DEI argue that colorblind policies overlook racism in society, whereas Goldfarb says there is no evidence for such a claim.
“There simply is no valid evidence that racism or prejudicial treatment is playing any role in health care outcomes,” said Goldfarb. “DEI advocates ignore the complexity of the issue, attributing it all to bias on the part of white physicians.”
It is “facile” to see health care disparities and attribute them to racism, says Goldfarb, because that ignores many other causes of health care disparities, such as “health care access, health literacy, personal and cultural behavioral characteristics, and even genetic factors.”
Merit Most Important
“DEI is the tool of identity politics,” said Goldfarb. His organization, Do No Harm, fights identity politics in health care, particularly the ideology of antiracism.
“We need look no further than the outburst of anti-Semitism to see what happens when we start treating people as members of a group and not as individuals with their own characteristics, needs, and health care problems,” said Goldfarb.
“It is certainly true that if one injects immutable characteristics like skin color or ethnic background into the formula for choosing America’s health care workforce, there must be a sacrifice in the quality of those individuals who become the physicians, nurses, and other health care workers of the future,” said Goldfarb. “Only merit should determine who can become a physician.”
DEI Requires Equity
“The problem with DEI is it changes the fundamental goal of medicine: which is to provide patients with the best possible care regardless of their race, religion, sex or national origin,” said Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation. “DEI argues that best possible care cannot occur unless there is an equitable distribution of doctors and other health care providers delivering that care.”
Matthews says ethnic diversity in medical schools has been increasing for many years, calling into question the need for DEI policies.
“Ironically, given the medical school push to impose DEI, medical school student diversity has been increasing for decades,” Matthews said. “While the majority of doctors are considered White, 56 percent, 44 percent are minorities or unknown,” said Matthews. “Asians, who have been the subject of racist attacks, make up the second largest group, 17 percent. Importantly, women comprise the majority of first-year medical school students. In other words, things are changing.”
DEI Is Not Racial Balancing
Matthews draws a distinction between a school wanting to increase minority representation and implementing DEI standards.
“While there is nothing inherently wrong with a medical school desiring to increase its minority representation, DEI turns it into a necessity,” said Matthews. “Thus, if a medical school can’t get the share of black and Hispanic students it wants, it may begin relaxing standards—and justifying its actions by claiming the school is trying to achieve a higher goal.”
The logic of proponents who claim DEI is needed to match physicians with the communities they serve is flawed, says Matthews.
“One of the biggest problems with this scheme is that doctors tend to move where they can develop their specialty,” said Matthews. “There is no guarantee that black or Hispanic doctors will return to their former neighborhoods and practice there. Very few people think black and Hispanic doctors can’t effectively treat white patients, nor should people think whites cannot effectively treat blacks and Hispanics.”
Harry Painter (harry@harrypainter.com) writes from Oklahoma.
