Editing David Satcher (section)

==== Criticisms of health inequality ====
While acknowledging progress, Satcher has criticized health disparities. In a 2005 article published in the journal ''[[Health Affairs]]'', Satcher and his oc-authors asked the question, "What if we had eliminated disparities in health in the last century?" and estimated, based on 2002 data, that "83,570 excess deaths could be prevented each year in the United States if [the] black-white mortality gap could be eliminated."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Satcher |first=David |last2=Fryer |first2=George E. |last3=McCann |first3=Jessica |last4=Troutman |first4=Adewale |last5=Woolf |first5=Steven H. |last6=Rust |first6=George |date=March 2005 |title=What If We Were Equal? A Comparison Of The Black-White Mortality Gap In 1960 And 2000 |url=http://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.24.2.459 |journal=Health Affairs |language=en |volume=24 |issue=2 |pages=459–464 |doi=10.1377/hlthaff.24.2.459 |issn=0278-2715|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

In a 2006 essay for ''[[PLOS Medicine]]'' discussing the ''Health Affairs'' article, Satcher stated that the study's estimates included 24,000 fewer Black deaths from cardiovascular disease and, if infant mortality had been equal across racial and ethnic groups in 2000, 4,700 fewer Black infants would have died in their first year of life.<ref name=":2" /> Without disparities, there would have been 22,000 fewer Black deaths from diabetes and almost 2,000 fewer Black women would have died from breast cancer; 250,000 fewer Black patients would have been infected with HIV/AIDS and 7,000 fewer Black patients would have died from complications due to AIDS in 2000. As many as 2.5 million additional Black individuals, including 650,000 children, would have had health insurance in that year. He called on people to work for solutions at the individual, community, and policy level.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Satcher |first=David |date=October 24, 2006 |title=Ethnic Disparities in Health: The Public's Role in Working for Equality |journal=PLOS Med |volume=3 |issue=10 |pages=e405 |doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0030405 |pmc=1621093 |pmid=17076554 |doi-access=free |df=mdy-all}}</ref>

Satcher supports a [[Medicare (United States)|Medicare]]-for-all style [[single payer health care|single payer health plan]], in which insurance companies would be eliminated and the government would pay health care costs directly to doctors, hospitals and other providers through the tax system.<ref>{{Cite press release |title=Physicians Propose Solution to Rising Health Care Costs and Uninsured |date=February 3, 2003 |publisher=Physicians for a National Health Program |url=https://www.pnhp.org/news/2003/february/physicians_propose_s.php}}</ref>

In 1990, while President of Meharry Medical College, Satcher founded a quarterly [[academic journal]] entitled the ''[[Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved]]''.