Until now, US presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama have mostly focused on delivering their campaign messages to non-minority voters in the USA. But this week, the two candidates extended campaign promises to Hispanics and African Americans in two sets of key speeches catering to a voting bloc that will help determine who makes it to the White House in November.

On health issues, Democrat Obama—who if elected would be the first African American US president—seemed better prepared than his Republican rival on addressing the disproportionate health risks faced by Hispanics and African Americans when compared with non-minorities.

In both speeches, one before the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) in California and the other at the annual National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) convention in Ohio, Obama offered new health-policy initiatives. Speaking at the NCLR conference, Obama promised a 50% tax credit programme for small businesses that provide health insurance to employees, a plan promoted by Obama’s former Democratic rival Senator Hillary Clinton and one that Obama says will help struggling Hispanic families.

At the NAACP event, Obama promised to “end the outrage of one in five African Americans going without the health care they deserve”, and he promised to do it by the end of a first presidential term.

McCain, who also spoke to both minority groups, seemed to overlook these growing health disparities, which include increasing obesity rates and continued difficulty in health-care access. 

Across the USA, childhood obesity rates have begun to level for non-minority children. But Hispanic children continue to disproportionately have higher rates—22% of Mexican American adolescent boys are overweight compared with 17% of white and 18.5% African American adolescent boys—which has boosted Hispanic children’s risk of chronic disease, according to a report by the NCLR. The cost of treating the health consequences associated with childhood obesity—estimated at US$14 billion—continues to soar.

Yet Hispanic children are much more likely to remain uninsured and get preventable health conditions. Nearly 40% of uninsured children are Hispanic, although they comprise only 20% of the population.

For adults, an estimated 15 million Hispanics and six million African Americans are uninsured, according to a 2006 report by The Commonwealth Fund, a private health foundation. 

Rising domestic food prices are also exacerbating food insecurity among families, with particularly negative consequences for Hispanic and African American children. A second NCLR report found that food insecurity among Hispanic (26%) and African American (29%) children is more than double that of non-Hispanic white children (12%).

These differences are partly why Obama’s mantra of change continues to resonate with minority voters. “This election is about the nearly one in three Hispanics who don’t have health care”, he told the NCLR audience. He also criticised McCain for voting against expanding the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

In McCain’s speech to the NCLR, the Republican nominee mentioned his immigrant ancestry, the economy, housing, trade with Latin America, education and his popularity among Hispanic voters in his home state of Arizona, but missing from the speech was a specific proposal that would address inadequacies in health care for Hispanics. Later, McCain’s comments to the NAACP focused mainly on education reform, with the Arizona senator mentioning health care only twice and without addressing the specific needs of the African American community.

Obama, on the other hand, mentioned health issues faced by African Americans no less than four times during his speech before the NAACP, including a call to curb preventable disease and access to medicines and affordable health care.

Voters will inevitably have to decide whether polished campaign speeches will actually lead to quality reform of the health-care system for both whites and minorities. But it is clear that minority voters, who strongly favour Obama by margins of two-to-one for Hispanics and nine-to-one for African Americans, are listening carefully.

David Boddiger

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 3:15 pm and is filed under US Election. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can trackback from your own site.