Hitting you in the Purse

Cate M

Insurance Costs, the Presidential Candidates, Effects on Women

Monday, November, 3, 2008

Insurance coverage and costs are significant issues discussed in this year's presidential election, but what has not been discussed are the disparities of cost that effect women and how each candidate's stance would relate.

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When faced with a $250 monthly insurance premium as a young, single woman, I began to look around for cheaper coverage outside of my employer-provided care. What I discover was both disconcerting and outrageous. The first detail I noticed was the near impossibility of finding insurance with maternity coverage. Although I had no plans of becoming pregnant, I immediately thought it preposterous to offer insurance to women between the ages of 18-40 that did not cover the health costs associated with pregnancy. In addition, the rates I found were only nominally better than the ones offered by my employer, but with drastically fewer options and less coverage. Soon an uninsured friend of mine discovered she was pregnant and found herself immediately in debt $2,000 in order to secure a obstetrician and, in addition, faced difficult choices regarding her dental care and other health issues.

These issues were troubling to me and led me to talk about them with friends, family and coworkers. I soon realized most women, especially women over 40, who are covered by a family plan and do not deal directly with these issues, do not understand the injustices of health care for the young and/or uninsured woman.

I felt justified in my suspicions when an article in the Oct. 30th edition of The New York Times caught my eye. It was entitled "Women Buying Health Insurance Pay a Penalty" by Robert Pear. In the article, Pear enumerates the disparities facing women in regard to health care costs and coverage. According to "new data from insurance companies and online brokers," women pay significantly more than men for individual policies which provide identical coverage to both sexes. According to Pear, in the city of Tallahassee, FL women can pay around 24-34% more than men of the same age and for the same coverage. These disparities occur similarly across the nation. Over the course of a year, a woman would likely pay hundreds of dollars more a year than a man.

Insurance representatives explain these discrepancies by saying that women accrue higher health care costs due to costs associated with pregnancy, more regular check-ups, higher usage of certain prescriptions, and female-specific chronic illnesses. Yet these "reasons", seem more likely excuses for the unequal care that is hurting our purses, while simultaneously benefiting their bottom line. It is arguable that pregnancies are beneficial to society as a whole since without pregnancy, there are no children; without children, there is no future work force supplying the tax money need to support our aging population. It is also arguable that more frequent check-ups actually reduce health care costs in that check-ups are preventative measures to help avoid the high health care costs of the more developed stages of an illness. As far as prescription and female-specific illnesses, men are more often prescribed certain medications like Viagra and face their own gender-specific illnesses like prostate cancer.

As for the politics on this issue of unequal health care, Marcia Greenberger, co president of the National Women's Law Center who was interviewed in the article, suggests that the tax credits offered in this year's presidential race would be worth less to women because of the higher premiums that they face. She added, 'We should not tolerate women having to pay more health insurance, just as we do not tolerate the practice of using race as a factor."

Women should not face the choice of forgoing pregnancy or, even worse, forgoing coverage altogether because our health care system treats them unequally and unfairly. The issue of health care maybe viewed as important to the nation, but it should most definately be seen as imperative for this nation’s women.