Racial health-care problems are stubborn — and they’re particularly bad in Ohio, report says

Health disparities between racial and ethnic groups have proven devilishly hard to eradicate in the United States.

In Ohio, they’re particularly stark between white people, Black people and Hispanic people. A panel of experts recently said a raft of cuts passed by congressional Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump will only make them worse — which may be why Trump is trying to make them harder to measure.

It’s long been known that poorer people have less access to quality care and are sicker than their better-off neighbors. But differences among racial and ethnic groups persist even when members of those groups have incomes similar to their white counterparts.

“Racial disparities are among the most persistent and well documented in the U.S. health care system,” a report released last week by the Commonwealth Fund said.

“Landmark studies have shown that racial and ethnic disparities remain even after accounting for insurance coverage, income level, and access to care. The root causes for these disparities are multifactorial, and include the historical and continued consequences of structural racism, the impact of social drivers of health, variations in health coverage, and unequal treatment within health care.”

Ohio fared particularly badly in the study.

States were rated for “health system performance” — health outcomes, access to care, quality of care, and use of health services.

For white people, Ohio’s score wasn’t great, ranking 33rd overall. But for two minority groups it was even worse.

For Hispanics, Ohio scored 16th-worst among the 48 states for which researchers had sufficient data. And for Black people, Ohio ranked 10th-worst among the 39 states for which there were sufficient data.

Those numbers are likely to get worse, said Joseph Betancourt, a family doctor and president of the Commonwealth Fund.

“The data in this report reflect the most recently available information on how the health system was performing through 2024 before the expiration of enhanced marketplace credits from the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid funding cuts, elevated eligibility rules and restrictions on coverage for legal immigrants all took effect,” he said last week during a virtual press conference.

“These recent changes are likely to make it even harder for people to afford and access care, and risk widening the very disparities this report documents.”

Betancourt was referring to nearly $1 trillion in funding cuts to Medicaid — mostly through new work and eligibility requirements that were part of the Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed last summer.

He was also referring to subsidies for insurance bought on Affordable Care Act marketplaces that Republicans allowed to expire at the end of last year.

Betancourt added that instead of addressing racial and ethnic health disparities, the Trump administration seems intent on blinding itself to them.

KFF, the health-information nonprofit, in September said data from which disparities could be detected was being disappeared by the federal government.

“The Trump administration has taken actions to eliminate equity-related initiatives and has removed federal data from online sites, deleting sociodemographic variables from datasets, and has delayed the release of some data,” it reported.

KFF added, “Decreased availability of federal data may impede efforts to identify and address health needs and disparities, trend changes in health and health care among different groups over time, and impact how resources are allocated, which could lead to overall declines in the nation’s health and productivity.”

Or, as Betancourt put it, “We know you cannot fix what you cannot measure.”