Samuel Lowell

I currently have a fellowship studying gender disparities in health care.

Robert Pear, writing in The New York Times, explains, "Women still pay more than men for the same health insurance coverage, according to new research." Though Obama's Affordable Care Act, will ban gender rating starting in 2014, the gender gap currently exists "in most states," leading to inequalities.

More recently, Reuters and Murray Waas shed more light on the issue with another great health-care investigation.

It shows how WellPoint, systematically targeted customers with breast cancer to find excuses to drop their coverage, Earlier, Reuters exposed how Assurant Health similarly targeted HIV patients.

If these health-care insurers were finding misrepresentation that this kind of targeting would just be yucky. But Murray Waas reports that it’s something much worse:

A 2007 investigation by California, found that Anthem Blue Cross dropped the insurance of policyholders after diagnoses with costly or life-threatening illnesses.