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EVERYTHING
Survey: Healthcare Costs Hitting US Women Harder
What: A survey of more than 10,000 US consumers found that among those struggling to pay their bills, 23% of women reported that medical bills were a major factor. Men reported the same challenge at a lower rate of just 18%. Women living paycheck-to-paycheck were also more likely to cite medical bills as a major reason for financial strain at 15%, compared to 12% of men in that group.
Why it matters: “These statistics highlight a troubling trend: women, more than men, are disproportionately impacted by healthcare costs, which exacerbates their financial instability.”
Source: Pymnts.com
FERTILITY
As Employers Offer Fertility Benefits, More Women Freeze Eggs
What: The New York Times’ Emma Goldberg has a feature on the booming business of egg freezing—and going through it herself after NYT increased its benefits associated with fertility. And as it turns out, she’s part of a much larger trend.
Why it matters: “The prototypical patient also seems to be getting younger, doctors say, a change coinciding with a steady uptick in corporate benefit packages that cover fertility preservation. In 2015 just 5 percent of large employers covered egg freezing; in 2023, nearly one in five did. … In 2015 there were about 7,600 egg freezing cycles recorded nationwide, and by 2022, that number hit 29,803, a nearly 300 percent increase.”
Source: New York Times
PREGNANCY AND POSTPARTUM
Falling Fertility Rates: Solutions Can Go Beyond More Babies
What: Monica Hesse at the Washington Post writes the piece I’ve been *waiting for* when it comes to the panic over falling birth rates. Her message? “Perhaps you are wondering, as I did, why we should care about this population decline. Have studies shown that women and couples are happier if they have more children? Not to my knowledge. In fact, many show the opposite…Do women want to have more children, but they somehow feel they are unable to? Maybe — though it appears that the birth rate is declining even in countries that have implemented family-friendly policies, such as extended parental leave….So what exactly are we talking about when we say that suddenly there aren’t enough babies? Enough babies for whom?”
Why it matters: “It turns out that when news articles and the economists quoted in them worry about the declining birth rate, what they’re saying, almost without exception, is that there aren’t enough babies for the economy. There aren’t enough babies to support the worldview that humanity’s purpose is to make more people to take more jobs to buy more things to be purchased by more people who will in turn make more babies. …This seems like a matter for policies, not pregnancies.”
Source: Washington Post
ABORTION ACCESS
The Abortion Cases in SCOTUS’ Next Term—Regardless Who Wins the White House
What: Politico’s Alice Miranda Ollstein has a deep dive on all the abortion cases that could make it to the Supreme Court next year, including “challenges targeting the ability of patients to cross state lines for abortions, the regulation of abortion pills, and minors’ ability to get an abortion without parental consent.”
Why it matters: “Multiple members of the court’s conservative supermajority, for instance, appeared open to the argument that the 14th Amendment confers legal personhood to fetuses — a holding conservatives believe could create a national ban on abortion at any stage of pregnancy. …[Other decisions from this past term] could create an open season on whatever future abortion policies the next president attempts to enact as well as rules already on the books — from FDA regulation of abortion pills to the availability of abortions at VA clinics to the recent expansion of HIPAA to protect abortion data.”
Source: Politico
PCOS
Testing Weight Loss Drugs to (Finally) Treat PCOS
What: There is no standard treatment for PCOS, and there have been anecdotal reports of semaglutide weight loss drugs leading to unexpected pregnancies—suggesting a possible hormonal effect. That led Melanie Cree, a pediatric endocrinologist in Colorado, to study if semaglutides can be used to treat PCOS, which is caused by a hormonal imbalance.
Why it matters: “While results from Cree’s first [randomized] trial aren’t yet published, they were encouraging enough to spur Cree to launch another, larger trial testing the link between weight loss, metabolic changes and reproductive function in people with PCOS.”
Source: Biopharma Dive
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