Women pay more: a reminder of why we need health reform

We've been understandably focused on the details of health reform legislation: Will our benefits get taxed?  Will there be a public option?  What will premiums be?  Who will be eligible for coverage?  Of course, we need to think about these questions - it's important to get health reform right.  But it's also worth remembering why we need health reform in the first place.

Women pay much more than men the same age for individual insurance policies, the New York Times reported recently.

"The wide variation in premiums could not possibly be justified by actuarial principles," Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, told the Times. "We should not tolerate women having to pay more for health insurance, just as we do not tolerate the practice of using race as a factor in setting rates."

"In America today, a 25-year-old woman is charged up to 45 percent more than a 25-year-old man. Once she reaches 40, it can be up to 140 percent more," Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, said at a recent Senate hearing on the issue. "Three-in-five women today have problems paying their medical bills. And 52 percent of women say cost is a barrier to getting health care. Seventeen million women in America are uninsured today."

At that hearing, one witness, Peggy Robertson, of Colorado, testified: "We applied with Golden Rule and I was denied coverage based on having a cesarean with Luke in 2006. I am in perfect health....I called Golden Rule and they said that if I would get sterilized, they would then be able to offer insurance to me....After filing a complaint, I discovered that Golden Rule is allowed to discriminate against women who have had a c-section."

Some of the issues with access and cost are described in a video prepared by the Women's Law Center.

Health reform could prevent insurers from discriminating by gender.  That prohibition is written into the reform legislation passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Mikulski has pledged to work to make sure it's in the final bill that comes out of Congress.