in june, the centers for medicare and medicaid services (cms) told the public that people using the united states' government's medicare health program had different results depending on race. four times as many black medicare patients went to hospitals for covid-19 than white medicare patients. there were twice as many hospitalized hispanic patients than white patients. there were three hospitalized asian patients for every two hospitalized white patients. the head of cms, seema verma, said this was mostly because of socioeconomic status.