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Health insurance and women

The health care disparity attacked by Kay Hagan and other women senators last week touches on interesting issues about insurance.

Here's our editorial today ... and Mark's blog entry, including a video of Hagan's remarks on the Senate floor.

Through their child-bearing years, women pay more for individual health insurance coverage (not group coverage obtained through their employer).

The senators demand equal coverage for equal premiums, which they say health-care reform legislation will deliver.

The question is whether it's really equal coverage.

In North Carolina, there are many more coverage mandates for female-specific services than for male-specific services. These include post-mastectomy care, minimum hospital stays for childbirth, bone mass measurement tests, ovarian cancer surveillance testing, contraceptives, mammograms and cervical cancer screenings and reconstructive breast surgery following mastectomy.

These are good policies, but mandated care costs money, making women more expensive to insure than men at certain stages of life.

If insurance companies are prohibited from charging them more, then the costs will have to be spread among a greater population -- in this case men.

Because men cost more to insure in their later years, and are often charged more for insurance, maybe it will all even out in the long run if gender differentiation is eliminated. (No one I'm aware of is proposing elimination of age differentiation.)

As noted in the editorial, differentiation based on risk comes into play across the insurance spectrum. It can be geographical, affecting homeowners or even auto insurance. It can be behavioral. If you drive more, your insurance company can charge you more for auto, although it also might give you a break if you have a safe driving record. It can have to do with age -- teenage drivers pay more, but the elderly pay more for life insurance. So do men, generally, because they don't live as long as women. Maybe the Senate's male members should attack that "discriminatory" practice.

I think some of this effort by the women senators is political. If they frame health-care reform as a women's issue, they may build more support for it.

Where insurance practices are arbitrary or discriminatory, they should be corrected. Or Congress can prohibit differentiation by law. If it does, some who currently pay more will pay less. But some who currently pay less most likely will end up paying more. It's important to be upfront about that.

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Posted by Doug Clark on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 10:06 am

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tonymo

October 13, 2009 - 11:05 am EDT

Doug, you are 100% correct. This is exactly why politicians have no business being involved with our health care. These female politicians are either dishonest, or clueless. They find it necessry to politicize everything to show us how women are discriminated against.

Private insurance companies who can't simply extort money from taxpayers to cover their political correctness, or incompetence, study all the issues involved to determine who is likely to be the higher risk, and price their product accordingly, which is why life insurance is LESS EXPENSIVE for younger women than the same aged younger men!
Either these "genius" female senators aren't aware of that fact, or are simply being dishonest. Premiums are based on risk factors not gender factors! This is exactly why private industry is more adept at most things than government.
They don't make decisons based on politics, but on whether why they are doing is feasible, and cost effective,unlike the many knee jerk reaction policies we get from government like "cash for clunkers." How is the auto doing now after the government incentives have stopped?

Private companies can't simply be all things to all people, price everything the same, then years later when they're millions, or billions (like Medicare) in the red, can't simply cut services, or go to the taxpayers to make up the shortfall!
I suggest that everytime a politician speaks, they should be hooked up to a polygraph so we can know whether they are lying or simply clueless!

Doug Johnson

October 13, 2009 - 12:55 pm EDT

Me agree with you? Scary.
My wife and I purchased a life insurance policy years ago, we are the same age, I pay about 10% more for same coverage.
Noticed the liberals announce today, everyone health policy will be affected by Obama lack of care.
Joe Wilson right again.
Hagan is a complete idiot! She proved that beyond a doubt, when she voted to put NC tobacco workers out of a job, to give health insurance to illegals children.
Of course she enjoys freedom from the media, like most wacko liberals.

dcribar

October 13, 2009 - 2:13 pm EDT

Doug:

Sorry to deliver the bad news, but some of the bills under consideration would either eliminate or restrict age differentiation. For the house legislation (HR 3200), I believe the restrictions are that premia for older people can be no more than twice that of younger people. This is referred to in the bill as "modified community rating."

Andrew Clark

October 13, 2009 - 2:18 pm EDT

There are a couple issues here. One is some of these things that are only cover women are maternity, so they are covering the child as well as the mother. I am personally never going to use maternity care, but I'm sure glad my mom did and I would hope that the mother of any children I have would too. Another is some states are less generous with what's covered than others.

A big reason for a lot of the nondiscrimination based on circumstances that is more important for health insurance than say car insurance is genetics. Genetics determine many of our health risks, and a world in which health insurance companies screen potential customers based on that is scary indeed. Without regulation, that would rapidly be upon us.

A larger point is that the point of reform is mainly to create exchanges to basically end the individual market because it is so insanely expensive. If people buying their own insurance are pooled like employer-based insurance, the individual market would just become closer to the employer-based one. This would make almost everyone in the individual market much better off, though of course no policy could make everyone better off.

Tony, if health insurance is cheaper for young women already, which I doubt, what's the problem? Nothing would change then. As for the companies determining the higher risk and pricing the product accordingly, that's what causes the market failure that is the problem! George Ackerlof shared the Nobel for his 1970 paper on the subject. This leads to some people being uninsurable on the private market, which leads to lots of suffering.

Incidentally, I agree that private industry is more adept at most things than government. Creating payment mechanisms for health care without strong regulation is just not one of them. Evidence is overwhelmingly on my side.

tonymo

October 13, 2009 - 3:01 pm EDT

Andrew, I said LIFE insurance if less expensive for younger women, not HEALTH insurance! If you're going to correct me at least correct what I actually say!

You also might want to check just how regulated the inasuerance industry is! It is mandates, and regulation that alters the cost of insurance upward, just as it is government regulation that increases the cost of almost every product available today. You know, the required labels that tell us no to put our hands on lawn mower blades when the mower is running!

Andrew, if you were just half as smart as you think you are, you be twice as smart as you are! I have sold, or sell life and health, and supplemental health insurance for the past 17 years, so please aim you usual condescention at someon else on this subject. You are simply a typical left winger who despite all of the evidence to the contrary, believs that government has the answers to all of our problems. They should, because they create most of our problems! Government is the entity that needs to be regulated!

Simply look at the travesty of this health care situation. The CBO scored a bill that does not exist. THERE IS NO LEGISLATION, but they are going to vote. Then after the non-bill passes, the out of control congress will stick in it every item they want. It will, like Medicare has, cost ten times more than we were told. It WILL NOT reduce the deficit, it will EXPLODE the deficit after the first 10 years because the CBO scoring was a LIE. It counts 10 years of taxers, but only 7 years of providing benefits. That is simply to make it appear to be deficit neutral. Are you really that stupid, or don't you care about the destruction to our economy this is just around the corner!

brian444

October 13, 2009 - 2:23 pm EDT

This really isn't insurance anymore, insofar as insurance has traditionally been associated with price models based on risk. It's mandated coverage based on the "right" to have health insurance at a "fair" (i.e. non-discriminatory, legislated) price. As Krauthammer pointed out in a column a while back, why would government want to run a program when it can mandate how "private" "insurance" does so? Same results, easy fall guy if things go bad. And they will: when governments set prices, things will tend to fall apart.