Forty-Two Percent of Women Can Afford Their Care. For Men, It’s Fifty-Seven.
The West Health-Gallup Healthcare Affordability Index just recorded its widest gender gap since the index launched in 2021. Only 42% of women say they can afford the healthcare they need. For men, that number is 57%. And women’s score did not hold steady. It dropped six full points in a single year.
This is not a small shift. A six-point drop in one year, on a measure tracking tens of millions of people, represents a massive increase in the number of women going without care they know they need. Skipping prescriptions. Delaying appointments. Waiting on symptoms they cannot afford to have checked.
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Women in the US are more likely to be covered by Medicaid (which has strict income limits), more likely to be on a spouse’s plan (creating dependency that ends with divorce, death, or job loss), and more likely to work part-time or in industries that do not offer employer-sponsored insurance. When coverage does exist, out-of-pocket costs, surprise billing, and the general unpredictability of what insurance will and will not cover have made the financial exposure of seeking care feel unmanageable even for insured women.
The six-point drop tracks a period of simultaneous pressures: higher drug prices, reduced subsidies in some markets, and the general post-pandemic retrenchment of employer benefits. Women also carry a disproportionate share of healthcare spending for their households, which means affordability pressure for a family often falls on them first.
Women who delay care due to cost are more likely to present with advanced-stage disease, miss preventive screenings, and forgo follow-up on abnormal results. The affordability gap is not just a financial story. It is a health outcomes story, and the trajectory is getting worse.
Source: West Health-Gallup Healthcare Affordability Index, June 2026. Widest gender gap recorded since index launch in 2021.