Indeed, in the four years of data CEO analyzed, 11,647 white, Asian, and Hispanic applicants were rejected by UMMS even though they had better grades and test scores than the average black student admitted. And UMMS isn't alone in using race to determine who gets in. CEO has studied preferences in medical school admissions at more than a half-dozen medical schools, including the University of Maryland, the University of Washington, and the State University of New York Brooklyn, all with the same overall results.
African-American med students who are admitted despite having lower grades or test scores than their white or Asian peers are less likely to pass medical licensing exams -- or, even if they pass, are more likely to perform poorly on them. This hurts everyone: the better-qualified students who are passed over to admit those who will eventually fail to become doctors, and the patients who may end up treated by doctors who are less well prepared. If the idea is to get more black doctors to treat black patients, is it really going to improve health care for African-Americans if those doctors perform worse on medical licensing exams?
But Obamacare will push more institutions to adopt racial preferences by giving preference to those that have, in the words of the Democrat House legislation, a "demonstrated record" of "training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or disadvantaged backgrounds." And notice the term "underrepresented minorities." They may as well have put up a sign "Asians need not apply."
Other provisions in the Democrats' bill would provide for "maintaining, collecting and presenting federal data on race and ethnicity," in order to "facilitate and coordinate identification and monitoring ... of health disparities to inform program and policy efforts to reduce such disparities." We've seen these efforts before in the context of employment and education. Their end result is always a form of bean-counting that leads to racial quotas -- which is bad medicine and won't improve health care for anyone.