Health inequities are pervasive across the country, with the health and well-being of Americans too often diverging along racial and ethnic lines. While recent studies have identified many factors leading to health disparities—from differences in health care access to social determinants like housing, safety and food security—how we finance health care services and the structural payment inequities embedded in our health care system have gone under-explored.

Through this report, we seek to address this gap by investigating how health care provider payment variation contributes to disparities. Specifically, do providers who predominantly treat Black, Hispanic, American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN), and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) individuals – collectively, “historically marginalized populations” (HMPs) - get paid less for the same services than those that treat predominantly White populations? And if so, is this driven only by payer mix—as HMPs are disproportionately covered by lower-paying public payers like Medicaid—or do payment differences within payer types play a role?

Download insight to read the full report.