According to “Health Law Cuts the Cost of Being a Woman” by Denise Grady of the New York Times, health insurance companies can no longer treat women as a liability.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other women in government are advocating for women’s health by ensuring that being a woman is not considered a pre-existing condition.  The new health care bill forbids all health insurance companies, like UPMC, from sex discrimination.  In the past, companies took advantage of women with unfair health care and health insurance policies towards them.

Companies who sell individual insurance policies, usually bought by people who have lost jobs or other group coverage plans, had been charging women more than men for the same health insurance coverage.  Many plans did not even include maternity care.  Insurance companies argued that women use doctors more than men.  The National Women’s Law Center found that men who smoked were actually being charged less than women who did not.  Even group plans when you compare health insurance were affected.  Although sex discrimination laws didn’t allow the excess costs to be passed down to female employees, smaller business and those heavy in female employees have been forced to make sacrifices including discontinuing coverage in some cases.

Gender rating is now outlawed and maternity coverage has to be included as an “essential health benefit” like heart attacks and cancer.  Women should no longer have to be concerned about getting fair treatment in the health care industry from companies like Golden Rule Insurance.  There are people who worry that insurance companies will be able to find ways around the new laws to protect themselves from financial costs, but the Law Center’s co-president doesn’t currently see any loopholes and is confident that the health care bill will better protect women.