A 22-year-old woman can pay 1.5 times more in premiums than a 22-year-old man.

The new Health and Human Services Secretary has her eye on healthcare disparities between men and women. Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Tina Tchen, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement and Executive Director of the White House Council on Women and Girls, hosted a roundtable discussion on May 13 with women small business owners and discussed the urgent need for healthcare reform.

At the meeting, Sebelius also released a new report, Roadblocks to Health Care: Why the Current Health Care System Does Not Work For Women, which is at www.HealthReform.gov. The report shows how the current healthcare system is leaving millions of women without the affordable, quality care they need. The new report and roundtable came as America celebrates National Women’s Health Week.

“All Americans are suffering under the current system, but women and small businesses are paying a particularly heavy price,” Secretary Sebelius said.

The Numbers Do the Talking

A few shocking stats from the report include:

• 21 million women and girls are uninsured;

• In the individual insurance market, women are often charged higher premiums than men during their reproductive years. Holding other factors constant, a 22 year-old woman can be charged one and a half times the premium of a 22 year-old man; and

• In a recent national survey, more than half of women (52 percent) reported delaying or avoiding needed care because of cost, compared with 39 percent of men.

“Across the country, women and girls are going without care or paying too much for inadequate coverage,” added Director Tchen. “President Obama and the White House Council on Women and Girls are committed to improving the health of all women and we know that healthcare reform is essential to achieving our goal.”

In October of 2008, the New York Times featured a similar study from the National Women's Law Center, titled Nowhere to Turn: How the Individual Health Insurance Market Fails Women. It discussed "gender rating," which is when an individual insurer charges women higher premiums for the exact same coverage as a man -- a practice that's prohibited in 10 states.

And insurers' argument that women's health coverage costs more is losing ground. For one, many women paying higher rates are not even paying for maternity benefits.

To view the NWLC report, go to http://action/nwlc.org/site/DocServer/NowhereToTurn.pdf?docID=601 .

Officials Spotlight Small Businesses

At the roundtable, Sebelius and Tchen also discussed the difficulties small businesses face when attempting to provide health benefits to their employees. Nearly three-quarters of small businesses that do not of­fer benefits cite high premiums as the reason. Small businesses that do offer health benefits are suffering. Forty percent of businesses that provide health care coverage say health costs have had a negative impact on other parts of their business.