Income inequality, ill health and the tax bill

Professional medical societies representing more than 560,000 doctors have voiced opposition to the Republican tax bill primarily out of concern for its potential negative impact on the health insurance market, according to a November 30, 2017 article in The Atlantic. However, the article stated, these groups are overlooking a more serious health threat in the bill: the ill health effects of income inequality.

One percent of Americans control about 20% of the income, a percentage that has doubled since 1980, the article said. Poverty, and the stress that can accompany it, are risk factors for various diseases and premature death.

“Income inequality has pathways through which it can impact health, no question about it,” said S (Subu) V Subramanian, professor of population health and geography at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in the article. “The concern for a society like the United States is more in relation to relative deprivation—in addition to absolute deprivation. Whether it’s through increasing premiums, or shrinking investment in the community, or disenfranchisement or displacement.”

The research of Ichiro Kawachi, John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Social Epidemiology and chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, also is mentioned in the piece “He has posited that social cohesion is eroded by a ‘pollution effect’: Wealth is sucked into private enclaves, gated subdivisions and neighborhoods where the 1 percent buy out of the health-care system and have less reason to interact with or care about the other 99,” the article said.

Read The Atlantic article: The Tax Bill Is a Health Bill