BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation has awarded $1.25 million in grants to 11 community health organizations around the Commonwealth to address health care disparities on the basis of race, ethnicity, immigration status, age, mental illness, and sexual orientation. Each organization will receive $113,636.

The grants represent the second phase of an intended three-year award schedule in the Closing the Gap on Health Care Disparities program area from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation. The first phase focused on assessing community need, and building collaborative relationships with providers and relevant community organizations. In this second phase, grantees will begin implementing their programs .....Full Story

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Racial inequalities in health care access and quality added more than $50 billion a year in direct U.S. health care costs over a four-year period according to a study released today by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

In this study, researchers at Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland found that over 30 percent of direct medical expenditures for African Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanics were excess costs linked to health inequalities. Between 2003 and 2006, these excess costs were $229.4 billion.

Further, the researchers estimated that the indirect costs of racial inequalities associated with illness and premature death amounted to more than a trillion dollars over the same time period. Eliminating these inequalities would have saved the U.S. economy a grand total of $1.24 trillion dollars .....Full Story