, principal in the healthcare practice at Deloitte Consulting, LLP and one of the report’s authors. “What we didn’t anticipate was uncovering a billion-dollar burden on women beyond maternity care that potentially places them in a position to choose between care that they need and care they can afford.”, 50% of women have put off healthcare they needed and 40% have skipped a recommended medical test or treatment because of cost, compared with 35% and 26% of men, respectively.
If you use more services than was projected for the group overall, but not enough to hit your out-of-pocket maximum , you can wind up getting less than the intended actuarial value. The only exception was for women ages 30 to 51, who presumably use enough services to get the full value of their coverage. Nonetheless, the report says, the trend is clear across a woman’s lifespan: “Women consistently derive lesser value of each health care premium dollar spent.”Deloitte suggests that it would cost employers $133 per insured employee per year to close the $15.4 billion out-of-pocket expense gap.
Diagnostic mammograms are just one example of a cost that specifically hits women. Though the ACA mandates annual screening mammograms be free for women over 40, follow-up diagnostic mammograms are not considered preventive. As a result, they often carry heftier cost-sharing for consumers. Redesigning benefits to treat these follow-up mammograms more like the preventive ones could reduce disproportionate financial burdens on women.