Brigette Courtot, Senior Health Policy Analyst

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst,
National Women's Law Center

In the individual health insurance market, insurance companies are generally allowed to treat pregnancy as a “pre-existing” condition. In practice, this means that they can reject a pregnant woman’s health insurance application altogether or offer her a plan that excludes coverage for the care associated with her condition—in this case, maternity care.

Through our “A Woman is Not a Pre-Existing Condition” campaign, NWLC is working to raise awareness about this and a whole host of other discriminatory insurance industry practices that make it more difficult (or even impossible) for women to get the health care they need.

But lest you think that pregnancy complicates coverage only if you’ve got ovaries, I refer you to a recent Colorado news article featuring a healthy 41-year-old man who can’t get individual market insurance because he is an expectant father. His wife has job-based coverage, but it’s too expensive to add the family to her policy, and so he tries his luck—literally—in the individual market. He is routinely denied, and learns that the basis for his rejection is his wife’s pregnancy. 

by Brigette Courtot, Policy Analyst,
National Women's Law Center

For most of their lives, women are charged more than men for health plans in the individual insurance market. This is a consequence of “gender rating,” the common insurance industry practice of using gender to decide how much to charge for health insurance.