And Perez's solution to the problem is to lower standards even further so that more under-qualified minority physicians are admitted to practice medicine. Medical schools already admit black and, to a lesser degree, Hispanic students with lower qualifications than whites or Asians. In 2001, my Center for Equal Opportunity published a study of admissions to the University of Maryland School of Medicine and found that the university admitted black students with much lower test scores and science GPAs than whites, Asians, or Hispanics.
As a result, black enrollees, on average, had much greater difficulty in medical school, maintaining only a 2.5 average in their first two years of medical school (compared with a 3.0 for Hispanics and 3.2 for whites and Asians). And they were less likely to pass medical licensing exams or to graduate than others. (CEO completed similar studies of medical school admissions at several other schools, which are available online here.)
Perez's solution would exacerbate the problem of poor health services for minority patients, not improve it. Ironically, the modern era of affirmative action was ushered in by the famous Bakke Supreme Court decision in which a more qualified white medical school applicant sued the University of California at Davis Medical School because it denied his application, choosing instead a less qualified black student, Patrick Chavis.
For years, advocates of race-based admission argued that Chavis' service to poor and minority patients showed the wisdom of the university's decision. Those arguments proved both embarrassing and tragic in the late 1990s when the California Medical Board suspended Dr. Chavis' medical license, citing "inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician" after several patients died or were severely injured in his care. Clearly, not every affirmative action medical school admittee will end up like Chavis, but admitting poorly qualified medical students increases the risk of producing incompetent physicians.
Race should never be the deciding factor in deciding who gets into medical school. President Obama has done a disservice to all of us by choosing a man to lead the Justice Department's civil rights division who thinks it should.