America’s Health Insurance Plans has made another concession to health care reform, pledging to end higher premiums for women as talks of a government-run insurance plan progress.

During a health care reform roundtable with members of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, AHIP’s president and CEO, Karen Ignagni, told the group that women should no longer be charged as much as men in the individual market, according to published reports.

AHIP is a national association representing nearly 1,300 member companies providing health insurance coverage to more than 200 million Americans.

This statement comes months after Ignagni and Scott Serota, president and CEO of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, wrote a letter to several legislators involved in health care reform offering changes in return for an “effective, enforceable requirement” all Americans are mandated to have coverage.

The latest statement about gender parity also came on the same day Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) introduced “The Women’s Health Insurance Fairness Act,” which would prevent insurers from charging women more, denying or limiting coverage based on their pregnancy status or delivery method, and ensuring comprehensive maternity coverage.

“The disparity between women and men in the individual insurance market is just plain wrong and has to change,” Kerry said in a statement.

The case against a public plan

With talks of a government-run insurance program being created to compete with private insurers heating up at the White House and on Capitol Hill, Ignagni said that the new plan “is not necessary to achieve successful health care reform.”

“We believe it is important for policymakers to consider the unintended consequences that could result from establishing a public plan to compete against existing private health insurance plans under a reformed health care system,” Ignagni said according to a written copy of her statement before the committee. “To illustrate our concerns about how we move toward an integrated, high quality, health care delivery system under a public plan option, the committee should consider the success of the private market in offering innovative care management programs, and the difficulty associated with achieving similar results in a new government plan.”

She pointed out that Medicare “has not effectively” coordinated care, addressed chronic illness, or encouraged high performance, but the private market “has a well-established infrastructure in place that is moving rapidly to collaborate with providers on new models that promote value and enhance quality.”