October 3, 2023 – Marielle Farina, a senior manager at consulting and accounting firm Deloitte, has spent her profession helping health insurers design their advantages.
However, she was unprepared for the flood of medical bills that hit her during this tumultuous time of motherhood.
“Becoming a new mother is very overwhelming – you have a few days in the hospital and then you take the baby home and try to figure out how to survive,” Farina said. “I remember getting bill after bill for a few weeks after he was born, which added to the sleepless nights and all the stress.”
As it seems, obstetric care is just the tip of the iceberg — women have higher medical costs than men, even without taking birth costs into consideration, a brand new one finds report by Deloitte, co-author: Farina.
The report focused on working women, who analysts say pay as much as $15.4 billion more per yr on their out-of-pocket health care expenses than men. This is true across all age groups and applies to women ages 19 to 64.
Deloitte's healthcare team studied greater than 16 million individuals who had employer-sponsored medical insurance. The results were staggering – in 2021, women spent a mean of 20% more out of pocket than men. Excluding maternity costs, the figure was still 18%, which equates to a mean of $266 more per yr.
The exact reasons for these differences are unknown, however the report identifies some likely reasons. Women use health care more incessantly and spend 10% more on their health than men. Women require special check-ups that men don’t, including gynecological exams, menopausal screenings, and expensive breast cancer imaging.
Women also get less for his or her money on the subject of medical insurance: amongst those with private insurance, they receive around $1.3 billion less in advantages than men, the report says.
The authors say the upper financial burden for health care may be seen as a part of the “pink tax” – the worth of products designed for girls, akin to menstrual products. This problem is exacerbated by wage inequality between men and ladies.
Women – particularly Black, indigenous and Latina women – make up nearly two-thirds of the country’s workforce in low-paying jobs in industries akin to food service, retail and house cleansing, based on a report from the National Women's Law Center. And these public-facing jobs were particularly dangerous at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Women, particularly Black women, are overrepresented in these low-paying, high-risk jobs,” said Venicia Gray, senior manager of maternal and infant health on the National Partnership for Women & Families, a research and advocacy group. “To hear that men don’t pay as much is disheartening.”
There is research that indicates substandard look after women within the doctor's office. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation Women's Health Survey 2022, 29% of girls ages 18 to 64 who saw a physician previously two years felt their doctors dismissed their concerns.
Additionally, 15% said they didn’t consider a physician was telling the reality, and 19% said their doctor assumed something without asking.
This ends in less efficient and thorough medical care, forcing women to make additional appointments and spend more on out-of-pocket costs, said Malia Funk, founding father of POV, a platform that advocates for girls's health.
Funk began the POV in 2021 after requiring eight doctor's appointments over three years to have a misplaced IUD removed that was causing pain, bleeding and infection, she said.
Like Farina, Funk had a background within the medical field, moving from medical school to roles as a healthcare strategist and personal equity consultant. Despite her extensive experience, she was unprepared for the hurdles and costs that got here with solving what must have been an easy medical problem, she said.
Her repeat appointments were considered “sick visits” that she needed to pay out of pocket at her $4,000 deductible, she said. She was also charged $800 to rule out sexually transmitted infections, which she said was refrained from her knowledge during other tests.
“When I had these negative experiences, I consulted with some of the largest healthcare companies,” Funk said. “I thought, 'I know this area, but I still don't know how to get good healthcare.'”
Kulleni Gebreyes, an emergency medicine physician and health equity chief at Deloitte, hopes the report will encourage employers and insurers to take a more in-depth have a look at the insurance structure. Business leaders should work with providers to grasp why these discrepancies exist and to revamp advantages and price sharing, she said.
“Women are not men with ovaries,” she said. “There are different medical needs, different disease burdens, different behaviors. As we think about how to make health care more affordable, we need to make sure our health insurance system takes that into account.”