Many Americans, especially women, struggle to pay their insurance premiums. healthcare you need Needs for services, especially dental and mental health care, despite having health insurance through their employer.
This is according to a recent report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
“Many Americans Health insurance coverage But the health insurance plans offered to workers offer lower benefits than they used to,” said Jose A. Pagan told Fox News. Digital in an interview.
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He is co-author of a new paper published in JAMA.
“There’s an enormous amount of waste in the system, and those costs are passed on to the American worker every day,” says Fox News medical contributor and health policy maker at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Dr. Marty Makari, Professor of Management, said. in Baltimore, Maryland.
About 61% of working-age Americans had health insurance through their employer in 2019, according to the study’s press release.
Out-of-pocket medical costs continue to rise.
The Affordable Care Act improved employer-provided insurance coverage by including coverage for: maternity carewill help uninsured young adults obtain coverage through their parents’ coverage, eliminating copays and deductibles for preventive services, the release added.
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However, out-of-pocket costs continue to rise.
More women skipped medical care
Researchers analyzed data from the National Health Interview Survey.
This is a nationally representative annual survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to a press release.
Researchers evaluated more than 238,000 adults aged 19 to 64 who had health insurance through their employer or union from 2000 to 2020.
The survey found that approximately 6% of the U.S. Women with employer-sponsored insurance I skipped the medical care I needed in the past year because of my 2020 expenses. This was double his 3% rate in 2000.
A minority of men said they would skip necessary medical care because it was affordable. That number in 2020 was only 3%, compared to 2% in 2000.
Many Dental, Mental Health Services Are Not Affordable
mental health Also, dental services were not particularly affordable for some Americans, especially women.
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Researchers also found that the number of women without access to mental health care has tripled in recent years, from about 2% to more than 6%.
“From 2000 to 2020, the lack of access to dental services for both men and women was consistently the highest of all services,” the press release notes.
“Lower incomes and higher health care needs among women may account for these differences in reported affordability.” NYU School of Global Public Healthaccording to a press release.
“Employer-sponsored insurance plans need to redesign their benefit packages to reduce gender-based disparities.”
“The main limitation of this study is that it does not include questions that delve deeper into the causes of rising health care costs,” Pagan told Fox News Digital.
“Employer-sponsored insurance plans need to redesign their benefit packages to reduce gender-based disparities.”
“Although the most recent data available is for 2020, the affordability trend may continue to increase as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.
Why are healthcare services not affordable?
Pagan told Fox News Digital part of the reason many people are unable to access health care is the lack of health care providers.
“Finding mental health care providers has been especially difficult since 2020. COVID-19 Pandemic year,” he added.
“The bottom line is that many middlemen are getting rich at the expense of America’s everyday workers,” added Makari, who has written more about this in her latest book, The Price We Pay. .
He says pharmacy benefit plans are “the biggest area of waste.”
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In New York state, health brokers receive 4% of every dollar spent on health insurance premiums, he noted.
At Makary’s co-owned business, “we pay $220 per person per month for health insurance through Sedera,” he said, adding, “That’s about half the cheapest Obamacare replacement option.”
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“Companies have been duped and do not have time to properly consider all options,” he added.