The widening income gap between the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans and everyone else has been well-documented in recent years. Now, a series of reports published in The Lancet examines this disparity through a health care lens, and the results are startling. For example, if you are rich, you can expect to live 10 to 15 years more than a less-affluent fellow American.

The initial report focuses on how the U.S. health care system has exacerbated income-based disparities in health care. Almost every chronic condition, from stroke to heart disease and arthritis, follows a pattern of rising prevalence with falling income, the researchers said. Poor Americans have worse access to care than do wealthy Americans, partly because many remain uninsured. For those with private insurance, rising premiums and cost sharing have undermined wage gains and driven many households into debt or bankruptcy. The report notes that 19 percent of nonelderly adults in the U.S. who received prescriptions in 2014 could not afford to fill them.

Meanwhile, the share of health care resources devoted to care of the wealthy has risen. Many affluent Americans now use so-called concierge practices that offer lengthy office visits and unfettered access to specialists.

While recognizing that many physicians in the U.S. are working to advance health care justice, The Lancet said increased efforts are needed. The authors urge physicians to reflect on the ways they and their institutions embrace or evade the responsibility to care for the disadvantaged and to resist efforts to privatize Medicare and to cut Medicaid funding, which they said would be public health disasters.