Fox News expert: 'Women have the breasts' so health care should cost more than men

A Fox News medical expert on Tuesday argued that President Barack Obama's administration was wrong to force gender equality for health insurance rates because men "only have the prostate," while women "have the breasts, they have the ovaries."

"Look, it's not bias, I'm not saying this as a man," Fox News Medical A-Team contributor Dr. David Samadi told the hosts of Fox & Friends. "They go through a lot of preventive screenings, they give birth, they have the whole mammogram, the Pap smear. Guys, we don't like to go to doctors, right? Seventy percent of health care decisions are made by women. In my own practice, I see it's the women who bring the guys, who say, go get screened."

"Yeah, but shouldn't that earn us a discount?" Fox News host Gretchen Carlson interrupted. "Basic fact that we are responsible for getting our men to come to the doctor? And what about the fact that women, because they do all this preventative care, maybe their health issues end up costing less than men's, who don't go to the doctor until it's a crisis and a big deal."

"Yes, that's a good point, except that, you know, women live longer," Samadi asserted. "Women live until age 81 and men live only until 76. So, we're using the health care system much less."

"In this case, it's not equal," co-host Brian Kilmeade agreed. "You have a better time on Earth than we do, you're here a lot more. You have six years of heaven, where you just have no men around."

Carlson pointed out that women were blamed for maternity costs, "but men and women have babies together."

"I agree with you that it's a shared responsibility," Samadi said. "But just the way the system are -- in my field, we only have the prostate. Women have the breasts, they have the ovaries, they have the uterus. They get checked in every part."

"1-800-GOD, can we change the organs of a woman so that she doesn't cost so much?" Carlson joked.

In a column for Time last week, Hadley Heath also made the case that women should pay more for health care.

"Women’s greater attentiveness to their own health likely also contributes to their longevity," she wrote. "After all, women may reap the benefits of this behavior by living longer lives; they should also take on the costs."

Watch this video from Fox News' Fox & Friends, broadcast Aug. 27, 2013.

(h/t: Media Matters)