Atrue public health solution to inadequate care would focus resources on improving the quality of care and self-care regardless of race.

Many experts today insist that a patient’s race profoundly affects how the medical-care system deals with him. The notion that physicians are biased against minorities––overtly or subtly––has acquired considerable weight in both academic literature and the popular press. In their new book The Health Disparities Myth (AEI Press, 2006), authors...

Many experts today insist that race profoundly affects how the medical-care system deals with patients and that a black patient will get inferior care. Is this true?

The authors of this book conclude that differences in treatment vary by race but not because of it.

A true public health solution to inadequate care--one that seeks to maximize the health of all Americans--would more properly target all underserved populations, irrespective of group membership.

I was initially assigned the working title, "Pursuing Equality in Health Care for the Elderly Is Futile." I prefer to think of that particular dead end of health policy as one of listening to the wrong music for too long. Hence, this article revises the title song of the movie, Urban Cowboy, to "Looking for better health [rather than either "love" or "love of equality"] in all the wrong places.

Health inequalities are best resolved by pluralistic social processes that facilitate, but do not mandate, more effective choices and trade-offs.

Rewarding organ donors for their remarkable gifts can be ethically permissible, economically justifiable, and pragmatically achievable.