Earning Less, Paying More for Health Care: Fighting a Battle on Two Fronts
by Lisa Codispoti, Senior Advisor,
National Women’s Law Center
Cross-posted from Disruptive Women in Health Care.
Between 2000 and 2006, health insurance premiums increased 87.5 percent—4 times more than wages. In addition to the burden of inflated health care costs, women are still paid only 78 cents for every dollar earned by men—with women of color earning even less. In a world where women are earning significantly less than men for comparable work, how can they also afford health care?
Pay inequity for women compounds the issues that already exist with our broken health care system. This is a system that makes unfair practices by insurance companies flourish, such as allowing health to be more expensive for women. For example, women pay higher premiums than men when they try to buy health insurance directly from an insurance company through the individual health insurance market (a practice known as gender rating.) Even worse is that many of these health plans do not cover maternity care or expect women to pay an additional fee (what is called a rider) to gain maternity coverage. Women are then left trying to stretch their already smaller paycheck for a much larger health care bill.
See who else is writing about workplace fairness for women on this Equal Pay Day.


