John Q Essay

In the movie "John Q"—alluding to John Q Public, the average guy—Denzel Washington—plays a working-class African American man in Chicago whose manufacturing job has been cut back to 20 hours a week. John Q has fallen on hard times, but he 's dedicated to his family and the American dream—and still manages to carry limited medical insurance. His only son falls ill with a rare heart condition and needs an immediate transplant, which his insurance will not cover. John Q desperately tries to secure the $75 000 necessary to save his son 's life. He sells everything he has and goes out begging, but comes up short. Disheveled and humiliated, John Q pleads with the white cardiac surgeon and the steel-hearted hospital administrator who ultimately

So this the real fact about health insurance and health ,health security is related to job security in the United States. Given this, racial and ethnic health disparities are partly economic. For example, current research has found that African American men, alongside other economically disadvantaged groups, continue to be left behind in the US economic recovery. Since most private health insurance schemes are employer-based, uneven working patterns are often associated with bad health outcomes. A new study by the Community Service Society in New York City estimated that only half (51.8 percent) of the African American men in that city were employed in 2003, compared to Latino men, 65.7 percent of whom were employed, and white men, 75.7 percent of whom were employed [.The study 's author, Mark Levitan, told the New York Times that this was the lowest rate of employment among African American men he had observed since 1979 . Levitan noted, "We 're left with a very big question.… Is this fundamentally a cyclical problem or is it more deeply structural? I fear that it is more deeply structural" .Racial gaps in male employment have been demonstrated in the Midwest, too, and in many inner cities. In Chicago, general Black-White health disparities are actually increasing.Levitan M. A crisis in Black male employment: unemployment and joblessness in New York City, 2003. Community Service Society. Available at www.cssny.org. Accessed March