Seen in the Courant:
Doctors are more likely to prescribe strong painkillers for white patients than for blacks and other minorities, according to a finding that researchers say may spotlight bias in the emergency room.[...]
In the study, opioid narcotics were prescribed in 31 percent of the pain-related visits involving whites, 28 percent for Asians, 24 percent for Hispanics and 23 percent for blacks.[...]
In more than 2,000 visits for kidney stones, whites got narcotics 72 percent of the time, Hispanics 68 percent, Asians 67 percent and blacks 56 percent.
I do, however, wonder what sorts of normalization was done to account for social or economic differences. I’ve got to believe that there is some correlation among ethnicity, cultural opinions about meds, how pain is expressed, whether patients are able to afford and willing to pay for meds, etc.