We're all for good news. But this type of reporting makes you wonder if there's much the Bush administration doesn't misrepresent.

The Bush administration says it improperly altered a report documenting large racial and ethnic disparities in health care, but it will soon publish the full, unexpurgated document.

"There was a mistake made," Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, told Congress last week. "It's going to be rectified."

Mr. Thompson said that "some individuals took it upon themselves" to make the report sound more positive than was justified by the data.

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The theme of the original report was that members of minorities "tend to be in poorer health than other Americans" and that "disparities are pervasive in our health care system," contributing to higher rates of disease and disability.

By contrast, the final report has an upbeat tone, beginning, "The overall health of Americans has improved dramatically over the last century."

The report was prepared by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, led by Dr. Carolyn M. Clancy. Administration officials said that she and her researchers had fought hard, at some professional risk, to protect the integrity of the report, but eventually went along with the revisions.

"No data or statistics in the report were altered in any way whatsoever," Dr. Clancy said. But a close reading of the evolving report shows that some entries in statistical tables were deleted from the final version.

The final report acknowledges that "some socioeconomic, racial, ethnic and geographic differences exist." It says, "There is no implication that these differences result in adverse health outcomes or imply moral error or prejudice in any way."

But Dr. Alan R. Nelson, a former president of the American Medical Association, said a large body of evidence suggested that "unconscious biases and stereotypes among physicians and nurses may play a role in causing racial and ethnic disparities." Dr. Nelson led a study of the issue by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences.

Prof. M. Gregg Bloche of Georgetown University, a member of the committee, said: "The administration's report does not fabricate data, but misrepresents the findings. It submerges evidence of profound disparities in an optimistic message about the overall excellence of the health care system."