The Cost Of Inequality

There have been lots of discussion about the ethics of health inequity and their impact in terms of health outcomes. But we’re now starting see more analysis of the cost of these inequities in the health care system. A recent Massachusetts analysis—The Time is Now: The $5.9 Billion Case for Massachusetts Health Equity Reform—found that populations of color are disproportionately affected by social drivers of health with an economic cost of almost $6 billion per year.

The $6 billion is associated with avoidable health care spending, which translates to approximately 2.2 percent of total medical . . .