Addressing differences in social class is critical to an examination of racial disparities in health care. Low socioeconomic status is an important determinant of access to health care. Results from a qualitative, in-depth interview study of 60 African Americans who had one or more chronic illnesses found that low-income respondents expressed much greater dissatisfaction with health care than did middle-income respondents. Low socioeconomic status has potentially deadly consequences for several reasons: its association with other determinants of health status, its relationship to health insurance or the abscence thereof, and the constraints on care at sites serving people who have low incomes.