April is National Minority Health Month, a time to raise
awareness about the well-documented health disparities that
continue to affect racial and ethnic minorities, as well as
highlight how the Affordable Care Act is reducing those
disparities. Despite the progress that we as a nation have made
over the past 50 years, racial and ethnic minorities still lag
behind their non-Hispanic white counterparts on many health
fronts: Minorities are less likely to get the preventive care
they need to stay healthy, more likely to suffer from chronic
diseases such as diabetes, colon cancer, asthma, and heart
disease, and they are less likely to have access to affordable,
quality health care. The Affordable Care Act, along with the
Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities and
the National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity
that HHS released one year ago, are helping fight these
disparities. Lack of insurance is a significant driver of health
care disparities. More than 1.2 million Latinos, B