Racial tension in the healthcare arena is not new. I work in an urban hospital, and I have witnessed some incredible interactions over the years. I can guarantee that the fears we are seeing so openly now on the national stage have been played out locally for quite some time.
In the urban hospital, many patients express worries that someone else is getting the health care that they are supposed to be getting. There are important underlying fears here: 1) that there are limited resources; that we are going to "run out of health care" 2) the person who is getting treated is definitely undeserving, and 3) this person is undeserving due to race, class or immigration status.