I’m just going to come out and say it: Black people continue to die in the care of institutions of power and influence because these power structures (or the people within them) suffer no significant penalty for killing us.
It’s the reason we continue to see police officers shoot an unarmed man in the back on a Tuesday and walk the streets of Anytown, USA, 30 days later.
It’s why we continue to see Black women die soon after meaningfully interacting with the healthcare system.
And it’s also the reason Dr. Susan Moore is no longer with us.
Dr. Moore, a black woman and mother of a teenage college student who fair I graduated from my high school alma mater and had a private primary care practice in Carmel, Indiana, when he went to the hospital specifically for complications associated with COVID-19. He remained in the hospital under the care of a doctor whom he identifies as Dr. Eric Bannec (your research record), who refused to offer him both the treatment for COVID for which he obviously tested positive and the pain he reported.
During your stay in the hospital she documented her treatment in a Facebook post, their own recommendations for their care, and what the doctor’s responses were. She documented how she was sent home despite not being in a position to make a safe decision. A few hours after returning homewas admitted to the emergency room a second hospitalwhere she could not be saved.
She looked into the camera, barely able to say more than four words without pausing, and told us: “He told me, ‘You don’t qualify… you should go home right now.'”
Dr. Moore says, righteously, “I maintain… that if I were white… I wouldn’t have had to go through that.”
This is a woman who took the energy and time to document her care in hopes that someone she would be penalized for what she knew was coming.
In a statement written by the CEO of the hospital system, Dennis Murphy, Dr. Moore was called a “complex” patient who “intimidated” staff. He went on to state, “I don’t think we failed on the technical aspects of his care,” because somehow death is not indicative of a hospital not providing care.
What happens to the doctor who clearly ignored your request for pain relief? Am of Indiana-have been prescribing pills indiscriminately for years for profit, but now Doctors suddenly have a conscience and want to second-guess whether to prescribe something? Why am I supposed to believe that it was simply a concern about addiction, rather than wanting to force a black woman, her professional colleague, into submission? Or worse yet, watch her writhe in pain, as if a non-habit-forming medication couldn’t be prescribed?
Why does this monster still have a job? Why would an institution put its name behind its defense?
Because we have not reached a sufficient point where racism causes a penalty fee. Are people losing their jobs? Are people losing their wealth? Are they losing their hard-earned licenses?
Is the hospital system being penalized in any way for this loss of life? especially Thus? Are your donors backing out? Are they losing patients, sponsorships, partnerships?
Are the other doctors talking? No? Is it because they are being written up for doing so?? Are hospitals penalized for doing that?
We haven’t gotten to a point in this society where enough people care about the harm done to black people, because there is still no empathy for black people. If you don’t see us as people in whose shoes you might one day find yourself, you don’t feel there is a wrong to right. If you Don’t feel like we are people who experience pain.you don’t feel that there is a person standing before you who deserve aid.
When I wrote about how to get Black people to trust the health care system again, to trust doctors and science again after a legacy of horrible treatments, I said it clearly:
Change this climate of conspiracy and mistrust […] requires regulation that penalizes those who violate our right to consent to care, and that significant punitive restitution be paid to those who have suffered… and the media needs to find it out and report it when it happens. We need to see that people care about us enough to preemptively protect us from harm, and that those who are hell-bent on harming us will actually be forced to suffer a consequence. and pay restitution.
There are endless situations in America where harm is committed against people, and that harm continues because the benefits still outweigh the penalties. In American healthcare, the more frequently a black woman is involved in the medical industry, the more likely her death will come sooner than it should. Her doctors will almost certainly rule out her pain. They will trick her into believing that she is less serious than she is about her, send her home and tell her to ignore it instead of giving her the tools to self-evaluate. And that’s why she won’t be able to fight for the most valuable thing she could have: her life.
And the health care system continues to function, as if this pattern is not real and terrifying, as if there is simply nothing to do.
If you read the comments on posts about Dr. Moore, you will be inundated with comments about how white people pass through th-hear. I don’t want to hear Black women’s experiences minimized in the comments section where we discuss the loss of a Black woman. That is No solidarity. I want to hear, “I’m so angry that this is still happening; we really need a change in our healthcare system.” I want you to do it do something about.
If medicine is going to focus solely on money, then it’s time for people to start losing their money when they commit injustices against black people. If the horrible and atrocious treatment of this woman does not justify the dismissal of this… this doctorSo what does he do?
