Healthcare Disparities & People with Limb Loss

The ACA recently sent comments to the Senate HELP Committee staff, Chairman Kennedy and Ranking Member Sen. Enzi on the topic of health disparities and people with limb loss. The ACA is urging Senate leaders to ensure that health care reform will eliminate the disability-based health disparities faced by the more than 54 million Americans with disabilities, including the almost two million people with limb loss. Research shows that individuals with disabilities experience a lower rate of education, and employment, and a higher rater of poverty when compared to non-disabled persons. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) reports that private health insurance is less available to people with disabilities. Two Surgeon Generals’ reports have called attention to the need to address disability-based health disparities in access to clinical care, prevention and wellness, and public health services. The main cause of acquired limb loss is poor circulation in a limb due to arterial disease, with more than half of all amputations occurring among people with diabetes mellitus. Today, diabetes is much more common in African Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, and American Indians/Alaska Natives. It is estimated that more than 75 percent of the amputations caused by diabetes complications might be prevented. Proper testing and treatment must be available in order to prevent both primary and secondary amputation.

Non-white, low-income patients without commercial insurance are more likely to delay diagnosis of peripheral vascular disease (PVD), which often results in amputation of the lower limbs. In spite of the startling evidence of the disability-based health disparities and the inherent costs to treat preventable conditions, current federal law does not consider individuals with disabilities a “medically underserved population” and fails to recognize disability-based health disparities under any federal program that addresses other health disparities. Health reform must fix this injustice.

Click here to read the ACA's letter to Chairman Kennedy, Sen. Enzi and the HELP staff.