Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

(PR NEWSWIRE) Economic Racism by Hospitals Condemned in Media Blitz

Latino Advocacy Group Launches TV/Radio Ad Campaign Blasting Hospital Price Gouging and Superficial 30% Discount Proposal

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., March 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Airing a set of controversial television ads and a blistering radio announcement in Tallahassee, Consejo de Latinos Unidos, a national non-profit organization which educates and assists Hispanics, launched the first wave of an aggressive media campaign against hospital price gouging against uninsured minorities, concluding that Florida hospitals are engaged in nothing less than economic racism.
The ads can be viewed and heard at www.consejohelp.org.
The first television advertisement begins with a black and white photo of a train station with a "Colored Waiting Room" sign as the announcer says, "Fifty years ago corporate America knew how to keep minorities down. Fifty years later some big hospital corporations have found a new way. Many Florida hospitals are charging Hispanic patients with no insurance three to four times as much as they charge Anglo patients with insurance for the exact same care." The ad then declares that economic discrimination is racism, and concludes with the comment, "See any similarities?"
The second television ad takes aim at the Florida Hospital Association's proposal to offer mandatory 30 percent discounts to the uninsured, mocking it with an example of how an uninsured Hispanic would be charged, even with the proposed 30 percent discount, almost $18,000 for a broken arm, while an Anglo with insurance would be charged $4,200 for the exact same care. The ad concludes with an exchange, "Great deal, huh? Yeah, for the hospitals."
Like the second television ad, the radio advertisement challenges the FHA's proposal to offer a 30% discount on bills marked up 5 or 6 times more. A woman says, "That's a lousy deal. They must think we're stupid," while a male voice concludes, "Or they think the legislature is."
The six-figure initial buy will run for the next several weeks.

SOURCE Consejo de Latinos Unidos
-0- 03/03/2004
/CONTACT: Lulu Galvan, [phone] or [phone], or K.B.
Forbes, [phone], both of Consejo de Latinos Unidos/
/Web site: http://www.consejohelp.org/

*** end of story ***

[F6 note -- of course, hospitals and other health-care providers are engaged in outrageous price-gouging against all who don't have insurance (see for example the post to which this post is a reply) -- but it is true that Hispanics are disproportionately uninsured, and I for one am very glad to see any effort to attack this practice by healthcare providers of charging the uninsured much more for the same services simply and precisely because they don't have insurance, as this is a practice that ought to be flatly and absolutely illegal -- I know that this is something dubya and crew will never address; perhaps Kerry will, either directly or at least by seeing to it that all can get real health insurance -- in any event, this is something that's angered me for years, and I am very glad to see that more and more folks are indeed beginning to focus on this as a significant issue]