Insurers penalizing women for health coverage

Women already face a disparity in the diagnosis of their maladies like heart disease. They're not expected to have heart attacks in their 30s and 40s despite heart disease being the No. 1 killer of women, not breast cancer.

My wife knows that. She had a heart attack at the age of 43. The supposed heart center where we lived initially diagnosed her with just having stress. She was not held overnight in the hospital like a man would have been in the same situation.

So now we have insurers exercising the same ignorance about women. But now they're further penalizing working women in their pocketbooks, when they already only make 72 cents on the dollar men make for the same kind of work. Even after taking out maternity coverage, women still pay more.

Now we can see even more clearly why Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's candidacy was so important to so many.

The New York Times reports tonight:

The disparities are evident in premiums charged by major insurers like Humana, UnitedHealth, Aetna and Anthem, a unit of WellPoint; in prices quoted by eHealth, a leading online source of health insurance; and in rate tables published by state high-risk pools, which offer coverage to people who cannot obtain private insurance.

To read more, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/us/30insure.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin