Cleveland Clinic racism, hidden by Biden, is now under federal investigation

Charges of racism against the Cleveland Clinic, raised over its programs that allocated care to certain recipients based on their race, that had been filed, but then dropped by the Joe Biden administration, now are under review again.

It is the organization called Do No Harm as well as the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty that originally raised the concerns over the Cleveland Clinics operations.

The complaint was originally filed in August 2024; and while the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights started looking into the allegations, the matter abruptly was closed by the Biden administration.

Now, however, the Trump administration has granted Do No Harm’s request for reconsideration and will re-open its investigation into the alleged discrimination at Cleveland Clinic.

At issue are the clinic’s Minority Stroke Program and the Minority Men’s Health Center. Both programs were specifically purposed for “preventing and treating [health conditions] in racial and ethnic minorities” through education, prevention, treatment, and other assistance and resources for addressing stroke and diabetes (and other stroke risk factors) as well as men’s health conditions and mental health issues.

“Rather than treat all patients equally and provide care based on individual treatment needs,” explained WILL associate counsel Nathalie Burmeister, “Cleveland Clinic unlawfully decided to allocate care and resources to certain patients because of their race. Now, there will be consequences. WILL is proud to work with Do No Harm in bringing true equality to the health care space.”

Stanley Goldfarb, M.D., chief of DNH, said, “The Department of Health and Human Services is correct to revisit our complaint against Cleveland Clinic’s discriminatory programs and we welcome their efforts. Injecting racial discrimination into treatment practices is unlawful, irresponsible, and leads to misunderstanding of disease and disease risk. Left unchecked, programs like the ones subject to our Civil Rights complaint erode public trust in medicine and will lead to worse health outcomes for all Americans.”

A WILL report on the dispute explained, “Race-based health equity initiatives, like Cleveland Clinic’s programs, aim to filter and view health outcomes through a racial lens, assuming that one’s race says all the doctor needs to know about who needs medical care the most. However, beyond race, any number of demographic filters could be applied concerning almost any characteristic to compare and address health outcomes—to name a few, height, eye color, birth order, handedness, entertainment preferences, where one lives, etc. The availability of any particular demographic does not make it an appropriate, relevant, comprehensive, or lawful standard for evaluating and addressing health outcomes.”

The report charged that since the clinic’s’ “race-based” programs “seek to balance the scales of mortality and morbidity based on nothing more than bare reliance on a patient’s skin pigmentation,” they are “illegal.”