It has been revealed that women buying a health insurance policy could expect to pay more 7% more on their premium than a man.

Health insurance companies have stated that the difference in price is because women cost more to insure, but critics have stated that this practice is just discrimination.

Lisa Codispoti, a senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Centre said: “The individual health insurance market is the last resort for people who can't get health insurance on their own. We see it as fundamentally unfair for women to be charged more, simply because of their gender.”

As a result, San Francisco in January filed a lawsuit that seeks to ban different health care rates for women and men, but the case is pending, so a decision will take a while to reach.

However, health care advocates are still working to change the present system: “When you're trying to encourage more women to get health insurance, it doesn't make sense to charge them more than men,” said a lawmaker.

So far, ten states have banned the gender rating.