The Affordable Care Act eliminated out-of-pocket costs for recommended preventative care for most privately insured patients. However, a new study led by researchers at the University of Toronto has uncovered racial and economic disparities associated with the denials of insurance claims for preventative care.
The authors evaluated a sample of over 1.5 million patients in the United States who were seeking free preventative care from 2017 to 2020. According to their analysis, Asian, Hispanic, and Black patients were nearly twice as likely to have an insurance claim denied than White patients. Furthermore, among patients whose claims were denied, Asian, Hispanic, and Black patients averaged higher out-of-pocket costs. These disparities remained even when the authors adjusted for patient geography, service type, and insurer.
The authors believe their findings have important policy implications. They suggest medical providers and insurers implement uniform billing practices, establish regulations for clear coverage information for patients, provide billing guidance for physicians, and develop language assistant programs that can improve communication with patients of all backgrounds.
Can someone please tell me how in world is this body of research considered as something not widely known, researched, and publicly discussed within academia in the USA. In fact, native born Black American scholars have been sounding the public bells about healthcare disparities for literally decades. That said, I would like to challenge the Swedish, Chinese, & probably Czech Republic professors to examine implicitly and explicitly racist healthcare disparities in their respective countries. Since these researchers are situated in Toronto, Canada, they should examine healthcare disparities in reference to African/Caribbean immigrants in the Toronto and even the whole of Canada. Let’s be honest, Oh Canada is in no position to be pointing finger given their own track record.