Prior HCCI research has shown that women are more likely to use health care services than men. Among people who receive health insurance through their employer, we find that women are, on average, 1.4 times more likely to receive any health care services than men, and this trend has remained consistent over time.
As shown in Figure 1, utilization differences vary slightly by service categories. Women used inpatient and outpatient services around 1.5 times more than men, professional services 1.4 times, and pharmacy services 1.3 times more than men.
When examining obesity treatments, however, the difference in service use is substantially larger. Women diagnosed with obesity in 2021 received obesity treatments during our follow up period, 2021-2022, at twice the rate of men with an obesity diagnosis. Figure 2 shows women received anti-obesity medications (AOMs) and lifestyle interventions at twice the rate of men (11,000 per 100,000 female enrollees compared to 5,550 per 100,000 male enrollees for AOMs and 2,600 per 100,000 female enrollees compared to 1,300 per 100,000 male enrollees for lifestyle intervention). Women received bariatric surgeries at 3.5 times the rate of men (1,800 per 100,000 females enrollees compared to around 500 per 100,000 male enrollees).
Reporting from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that there are not substantial differences in the prevalence of obesity between women and men. The same report did find slightly higher prevalence of severe obesity among women. Because the measures of treatment use are reported at a rate per 100,000 enrollees, any difference in how frequently men or women are diagnosed with obesity is not contributing to the differences we observe. Note, the methodology on the HCCUR utilization rates and obesity treatment rates have been previously documented.
There are no doubt myriad reasons for the disparity in obesity treatment, including physician practice patterns and patients’ individual preferences. Some of the difference might be explained by the differences we observe in health care utilization overall. The gap between women and men in obesity treatment, however, is much more stark and may be worthy of additional exploration.