Equality or equity

The American Medical Association this month released an equity-focused program that criticizes meritocracy, individualism and the free market. This represents an anti-capitalism view. They feel that the way medical disease should be discussed is in terms of economic status. For example the doctor should not say that low income people have the highest level of heart disease. They should instead say, people underpaid and forced into poverty as a result of banking policies, real estate developers gentrifying neighborhoods, and corporations weakening the power of labor movements have the highest level of heart disease. Meritocracy means people should earn more based on their merit. Individualism means people should be judged as individuals not by the group they belong to. Free market means everyone can achieve according to their effort. 20% of full time medical school faculty are Asian Americans while only six percent of the population fall into this group. This happened because this group out works the competition, meritocracy, they did it on their own, individualism and finally they were afforded the opportunity because of the free market. In 2021 there were 11,240 Asian American applicants to medical schools and 4,300 Black applicants. Today 17% of active physicians are Asian Americans 5% are Black in spite of the fact that Blacks at 12% represent twice as many people in the population. This organization appears to promote the idea that Blacks need special help and smacks of what Bush called the soft bigotry of low expectations. Schools have followed this pattern for years and it has failed to help Black students.