Final Diagnosis: Poverty
Moreover, 35 percent of Israelis said they gave up on doing medical tests or treatments through the health maintenance organizations because of the long wait times. Of these, 51 percent resorted to private medicine, which is more expensive.
And 19 percent of Israelis said they skipped a test or treatment because it required traveling too far away. This figure is up from 11 percent in 2018 and 9 percent in 2014. Not surprisingly, the rates are particularly high among residents of the periphery.
The study was compiled by the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research and was submitted to the Health Ministry’s director general on Monday. It is based on a survey of 5,000 respondents conducted by the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute.
The survey found that in total, roughly 1.1 million Israelis forwent some treatment or service in 2021 or 2022. More specifically, 5 percent of all Israelis skipped some kind of treatment, 5 percent skipped a medical consultation and 6 percent did without a medication (there is some overlap between the categories).
Even though medical treatments and medications are heavily subsidized under the national health insurance program, for some patients, the copayments can add up to significant amounts of money. Among the poorest fifth of the population, the percentage of people who forwent a medical treatment or service rose to 19 percent, and in the ultra-Orthodox community, it was 23 percent.
The study noted that residents of the periphery have less access to medical services because there are fewer doctors there. In the greater Tel Aviv area, there are 5.5 doctors for every person. But the figure drops to 4.6 in Haifa and just 2.7 in the north and south.
Other health data illustrate the impact of lower socioeconomic status, the availability of medical services and distance from the center of the country. For instance, 15.6 percent of adults in the bottom two socioeconomic deciles are diabetics, compared to just 6.5 percent among the top two deciles. Or to give a more concrete example, there are 39 diabetics per 1,000 people in Ramat Hasharon compared to 138 per 1,000 people in Jisr al-Zarqa.
The same gaps are evident in tests for the early detection of cancer. For instance, the proportion of women aged 25 to 54 who have screened for cervical cancer stands at 66 percent in the upper socioeconomic deciles compared to just 30 percent in the lower deciles. And the number of adults aged 50 to 74 who have screened for colon cancer stood at 70 percent in the upper deciles but 59 percent in the lower ones.
Ido Efrati