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Being a victim of rape costs an average of $3,500 in medical bills, study finds

Seeking emergency medical care within the US after a sexual assault can incur hefty hospital payments that will deter assault reporting and compound victims’ trauma, based on a brand new examine revealed within the New England Journal of Medicine.

On common, hospital emergency departments charged $3,551 for pressing medical care coded as brought on by sexual violence. People who have been sexually assaulted whereas pregnant confronted even steeper payments, with a mean of $4,553. Uninsured victims or those that selected to pay themselves have been served payments that averaged $3,673. Even these with personal insurance coverage confronted burdensome payments; the examine discovered that insured victims paid a mean of 14 % of their payments out of pocket, which for the common invoice would work out to almost $500.

“Emergency division fees might discourage the reporting of rape and looking for of medical take care of each short-term and long-term sequelae of sexual assault,” the authors warning. “Incurring such fees might additional hurt survivors—even these with full insurance coverage protection—by serving to reveal a probably stigmatizing occasion to folks, companions, or employers. Moreover, such payments might additional traumatize survivors by suggesting that they’re personally chargeable for their assault.”

The examine was carried out by researchers from throughout the nation, together with on the University of California, Los Angeles; Harvard University; City University of New York at Hunter College; and led by a doctor at Planned Parenthood in Billings, Montana.

Steep worth

The workforce sifted by nationally consultant knowledge on 35,807,950 hospital-based visits to emergency departments from the 2019 Nationwide Emergency Department Sample database. They pulled out data on visits that had at the very least one diagnostic code for sexual violence.

In all, they gathered information of 112,844 emergency division visits linked to sexual assault. Among the victims, 88 % have been girls. Most (53 %) have been between the ages of 18 and 44 years, however 38 % have been between 0 and 17.

Treatments supplied in these emergency care visits can embrace proof assortment (“rape kits”) but in addition remedy for bodily accidents, equivalent to damaged bones or vaginal laceration repairs. There’s additionally diagnostic testing, remedy to forestall sexually transmitted ailments and HIV an infection, emergency contraception, and counseling.

Medicaid was the anticipated payer for 36 % of the victims, and 36 % reported earnings of lower than $38,000. Among the 112,844 information, an estimated 17,842 victims have been anticipated to pay their hospital payments themselves.

The authors be aware that the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) mandates that ladies shouldn’t be charged for proof assortment throughout their post-assault medical care, although that isn’t at all times heeded. But, they push additional, saying that the VAWA also needs to cowl remedy. “More in depth reforms, together with common well being care protection, are wanted to make sure that prices usually are not a barrier to important medical care and forensic analysis in instances of sexual assault,” the authors argue.

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