In England, getting sick is a health issue, not an economic one.
Indeed, a full 91 percent of U.K. women are confident they could afford the costs associated with a serious illness. Not so in the United States, where 48 percent of women can't express such confidence, according to a recently released study by The Commonwealth Fund.
No doubt a lot of that has to do with a lack of insurance. In 2010, roughly 18.7 million women in the United States, or 20 percent, did not have access to health insurance. This amounts to 6 million more women without insurance than just ten years before. (h/t: EurekAlert)
The problem would appear to have potentially gotten worse since then. Another recently published study by The Commonwealth Fund found one-fourth of Americans were without health insurance at least once last year.
This is all important because the decision to seek help is tremendously influenced by whether someone has insurance. While only 32 percent of insured women were put off from seeking care because of cost-related issues, that percentage more than doubled among uninsured women, the study found.
The report does estimate that the percentage of women in the United States without access to health insurance will fall to 8 percent upon the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act. In Texas, which today is estimated as having the highest percentage of uninsured women, approximately 11.6 percent of women will remain uninsured after the act's full implementation.