Lemondrop

Does it annoy you to remember that women still make 78 cents for every dollar that men make? Get ready for more frustrating news: The New York Times reported that women can pay up to 49 percent more for the same individual heath-insurance policies than their male counterparts do -- and insurance companies say it's because women get pregnant.

Insurers say that women between the ages of 19 and 55 typically use more health care -- which makes sense, because those are prime childbearing years -- and insurance companies use this info to justify charging women higher premiums. Thomas T. Noland Jr., a senior vice president at insurance firm Humana, said that bearing children makes health conditions like urinary incontinence more likely later in life. But that argument doesn't exactly hold water (ha), considering that even when insurance doesn't cover maternity care, women still pay more for health insurance.

Women, say critics, tend to use more preventative health care -- they go to the doctor more for regular check-ups and take prescriptions for chronic illnesses. This stuff tends to cost insurers more in the short term but save a lot of money in the long term, but plenty of insurers factor in likelihood of risk -- after all, that's why young guys pay more for auto insurance.

Says Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, "We should not tolerate women having to pay more for health insurance, just as we do not tolerate the practice of using race as a factor in setting rates."

Other critics say that while only women can bear children, having babies takes both men and women and benefits society as a whole, so women shouldn't be exclusively charged.

Tell us: Are women being penalized with health-insurance premiums, or is this fair based on how much women use doctors?