Three questions for you: 1) Do you have heart disease? 2) Do you have diabetes? And 3) Are you a woman? If you answered Yes to #3 and/or #1 or #2, then you may be interested to know that you are less likely to receive proper care than men who would have also answered Yes to #1 and #2.

According to a study conducted by the RAND Corporation, women with diabetes and/or heart disease are less likely to receive a variety of outpatient medical treatments than their male counterparts. Bear in mind that all of the patients in the study either had private insurance or were enrolled in Medicare -- so this disparity did not come as a result of an insurance coverage gap. Moreover, the scientific conclusions were not drawn from a small sample size of a few thousand people. Try 50,000 men and women for a sample size -- a bit more reliable, if you ask me.

Just to give you a general idea of this gender disparity, here's an example: Women were prescribed ACE inhibitor drugs for chronic heart failure far less than men were, and the same goes for beta blockers after a heart attack. This is just one of the many instances where gender appeared to influence a patient's medical treatment. More can be found on the RAND website at: www.rand.org