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EVERYTHING
Women Pay More for Health Care. One Reason? Copays.
What: Women pay more for health care, even if they have insurance AND when you remove costs associated with pregnancy. A Deloitte analysis found women pay $266 more per year on out-of-pocket health costs.
Why it matters: This adds up to over $15 billion per year, according to Deloitte. Why is it happening? Women’s services can be more complicated and require more than one visit – for example, an irregular mammogram or pap smear. But each visit requires a copay, and multiple trips for one diagnosis just don’t happen to men as often.
Source: Marketplace
MENSTRUATION
The Spectrum of How the Brain Changes During Menstruation (And How that Affects Mood)
What: The Chicago Tribune interviews University of Illinois Chicago researchers about their findings that thinking about suicide and planning for it peaked right before menstruation. Among the women surveyed, that didn’t present as the wildly fluctuating moods that are a PMS caricature. Instead, they “tended to be those depressive symptoms, hopelessness, losing interest in things we usually enjoyed — those were the types of symptoms that were driving those increases in intensity in suicidal ideation during the peri-menstrual phase. It was depression that really drove it for suicidal planning.”
Why it matters: Researcher Tory Eisenlohr-Moul said the typical way to think about PMDD was that someone has it or they don’t. But she said this research showed that “when you recruit people who just happen to be female with suicidality, most people have some degree of change, and it doesn’t look the same for everyone. It’s not so black and white, like you have it or you don’t. It’s a gradient: How sensitive are you to these hormonal changes in the brain?”
Source: Chicago Tribune via Daily News
BIRTH CONTROL
Life In Texas Now That Teens Must Get Parental Consent for Birth Control
What: The Texas Tribune has a deep dive into the repercussions of a court ruling that makes the state the only one in the country where certain clinics must get parental consent to give teenagers birth control.
Why it matters: Just one anecdote from the piece: “Project Vida, a federally qualified health center in El Paso, has seen a 50% drop in teens making appointments for contraception, chief medical Dr. Luis Garza said. Birth control appointments can be a critical entry point to the health care system for teens, where they can get screened for sexually transmitted diseases and discuss mental health issues and primary care needs. ‘They’re scared to even come in because they think their parents are going to find out, and they’re missing out on a lot because of that,’ Garza said.”
Source: Texas Tribune
ABORTION ACCESS
Trump Says He’s ‘Proudly the Person Responsible’ For Ending Abortion Access
What: GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump released a video saying he was “proudly the person responsible” for overturning Roe vs. Wade and “eliminating the constitutional right to abortion after almost 50 years.”
Why it matters: Trump said he wants to leave access to vital health care for women up to state legislatures instead of health professionals. He also didn’t say if he’d use the FDA or other federal health agencies to restrict abortion access nationally if he regains the White House.
Source: New York Times
ONCOLOGY
What Are AI Mammograms and Are They Worth It?
What: The New York Times delves into AI mammograms, an additional service offered by some clinics as a way “speed the work of radiologists and detect cancer earlier than standard mammograms alone.”
Why it matters: There’s evidence that this can help find cancers that might otherwise be missed, but so far “it is not clear if A.I. analysis will actually reduce deaths from breast cancer, or simply inflate survival numbers by finding more cancers earlier.”
Source: New York Times
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