Litigation, Integration, and Transformation : Using Medicaid to Address Racial Inequities in Health Care

Using a public health policy perspective, this article examines the persistence of racial inequities in nursing homes and prescribes a solution to address these inequities. I use empirical data to prove the persistence of racial inequities in health care, analyze the government policies that allow racial inequities to continue, and provide a solution of regulatory integration. Specifically, I propose that civil rights enforcement be integrated with the nursing home enforcement system, which has been aggressively enforced and monitored. There are many strategies that may lead to the adoption of this system. One such strategy is using the Medicaid Act to induce the government to fulfill its non-race based regulatory duties of access and quality of care, which would improve the care of African Americans. Aimed at forcing the government to fulfill its regulatory mandates, this strategy is intended to transform a broken civil rights system that implicitly accepts the unequal treatment of African Americans into an effective one that proscribes and puts an end to racial discrimination