U.S. health care can’t afford health inequities

Inequities across the US health system limit underserved people’s access to affordable, high-quality care, create avoidable costs and financial waste that span society, and impact every individual’s potential to achieve health and well-being. To understand how far-reaching this issue is, Deloitte’s actuarial team developed a model to quantify the link between health care spending and health care disparities related to race, socioeconomic status, and sex/gender. The team analyzed several high-cost diseases (e.g., diabetes, asthma, and cardiovascular disease), determined the proportion of spending that could be attributed to health inequities today, and trended the spending to 2040—while accounting for changes in population and per capita spending. (author introduction) #P4HEwebinarDecember2023