When you were born, your path in life was largely laid out for you by five simple numbers. Your zip code. In 1963 the zip code originated as a way to get mail. However, what started as insignificant now catalogs your quality of life. It can tell us everything from how likely a baby is to reach their first birthday to how long someone will live and what they’re most likely to die from. These revelations aren’t new or unknown , the only thing they actually reveal now is our unwillingness or inability to act. The question posed is simple, but rarely thought about. If we know about these disparities, why don’t we do anything to fix them? The truth is that they’ve been ingrained into our culture and society over generations. We’ve not only come to accept them as truths, but to expect them. The world didn’t wake up one day and realize the grass was greener on the other side, it was built that way through systemic oppression and abuse. Your zip code is more than a way for you to get mail, it’s a way for societal elites to keep people in their places. There are many things that could be determined by your zip code, but this article will focus only focus on the two we find the most important, healthcare and education.
The National Library of Medicine defined healthcare disparity as the differences in access to or availability of facilities and services between socioeconomic and geographic defined populations.One of the biggest divides is between urban and rural communities. Rural populations simply don’t have the same access to care. Nearly every community has a family practice doctor, but anyone in rural communities will have to travel to see a specialist. Traveling costs add money to an already expensive destination that most Americans struggle to pay. This also brings us to a division caused by wealth. It’s big, ugly, and largely ignored. The problem is it gets bigger every time the wage gap widens. That’s what insurance is for though right? No, not really. According to healthcare.gov location is one of five factors that affects how expensive your healthcare will be. This is information is repeated by eHealthInsurance, a website that offers insurance from providers such as Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield. This is where things started to get… confusing. If the goal is to make healthcare affordable based on where you live and the average economic status, why is medical debt the number one cause of bankruptcy in America? In 2017 the National Bankruptcy Forum reported that just over sixty percent of insured Americans lost their savings with forty five percent of Americans saying they would struggle to pay an unexpected $500 medical bill. Of those, nearly twenty percent wouldn’t be able to pay at all. So if looking at where you live isn’t meant to save money, then what’s the purpose? It’s highly unlikely insurance companies will answer that question, so we’ll hazard a well reasoned guess instead. Companies know how much to charge. If you live in an area that’s economically disadvantaged it’s harder to pay, but there are more reasons to. Anything from crime rates to food deserts can lead to the need for medical care. In a 2016 article by Peter Reuell at the Harvard Gazette, in New York City there is a lifespan gap of around ten to fifteen years between the upper and lower economic classes. Money is the root of the problem. Wealthier areas have newer hospitals that are better staffed. They can afford to because they cater to more affluent patients. This isn’t just in areas separated by distance. They could practically be neighbors, yet not have access to the same quality of care.
Education can provide people with the ability to change their lives. But what happens when people don’t have the same access to quality education? According to Education Policy Program of the New America Foundation, public education is funded by federal, state, and local government. The federal government supplies 13% of funding, state governments provide 43%, and the local governments provide 44%. For the most part state governments gain the money to fund schools through income taxes and sales tax. Local governments provide school funding by property tax. Here’s where the disparity starts to kick in. Take a wealthy neighbourhood in a nice suburb, with large houses and yards. There are large properties to tax and people have a comfortable bulge in their wallets. It only makes sense that they spend more. This results in high property tax flows and an abundance of wealth generated from sales taxes. People who have the most, have the greatest advantage while the people in less fortunate areas are left needing. Success is staggered across various zip codes and neighborhoods. At this point we have to ask ourselves how we’re supposed to break this cycle. When people in the most need have the least access to funding to further their education. It seems to beg the question though, are people meant to break the cycle?
We’ve seen the proof and logic behind how something as small as the neighborhood your born in can affect you throughout your life. It can determine how long you’ll live and the quality of life. The inspiration for this article however was a recent report by the University of Texas Health Science Center. In various zip codes across the state infant mortality rates are drastically different. Overall Texas has a fairly low infant mortality rate, in fact over a four year period fifteen zip codes didn’t have a single case of infant mortality. Unfortunately, nearly another sixty zip codes lost one percent of infants before the first birthday. In Fort Worth the zip code 76107 had a relatively low rate of 1.8 deaths per 1,000 births. In contrast in the neighboring zip code 76164 the rate skyrocketed to 12.3 for every 1,000 births. It’s often hard to recognize systemic disparity as part of our daily lives, but it’s still there. The answer to disparity is a collective solution between people from different walks of lives. The more people are informed about these disparities, the closer we are to a solution.
Sources:
- University of Texas Health Science Center. (n.d.). Infant Mortality Rates in Texas. Retrieved from http://www.utsystempophealth.org/imr-texas/
- US National Library of Medicine. (n.d.). HSRIC: Health Disparities. Retrieved from https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hsrinfo/disparities.html
- Healthcare.gov. (n.d.). How Health Insurance Marketplace Plans Set Your Premiums. Retrieved from https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums/
- eHealthInsurance Services. (n.d.). Health Insurance FAQs – Questions about Medical Insurance. Retrieved from https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/ehi/help/faq?faqId=HS1&categoryId=HS1-1-14&entryId=1
- EHealthInsurance Services. (n.d.). How do ZIP codes affect group health insurance? Retrieved from https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/ehi/help/newhelpcenter?entry=faqId
- National Bankruptcy Forum. (2017, December 14). US Medical Debt: 10 Facts That Will Shock You. Retrieved from http://www.natlbankruptcy.com/us-medical-debt-statistics/
- Reuell, P. (2016, April 11). For life expectancy, money matters. Retrieved from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/04/for-life-expectancy-money-matters/
- National Center for Education Statistics. (n.d.). The NCES Fast Facts Tool provides quick answers to many education questions (National Center for Education Statistics). Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372
- McCann, C. (n.d.). School Finance. Retrieved from http://www.edcentral.org/edcyclopedia/school-finance/