It's interesting how people generally consider it acceptable for insurance companies to discriminate based on gender, when that discrimination would probably not be considered OK in other areas. You don't choose your gender, why should you be punished for it? Would people also be OK if insurance companies discriminated based on race? Surely there is some correlation between race and collision risk as well.
I know you’re trying to do a reductio ad absurdam here, but insurance companies already do discriminate based on race. In fact, it would be irresponsible for medical insurance providers, in particular, to not discriminate (that is, have different premiums) based on race.
Black people have more heart attacks, white people are more likely to develop Seasonal Affective Disorder in the same geographic region, etc. It’s nothing to do with predicting behaviour, it’s just differing physiologies, causing different levels of risk of certain physiological conditions irrespective of the choices we make or how we’re raised.
As well, different races respond better or worse to different drugs. There might be a cheap way to treat hispanic people for a condition but only an expensive way to treat any other race. In that situation, if there was actuarial data saying that Hispanic person A and non-Hispanic person B had an equal chance of developing that condition, it would make sense for person B’s premiums to be higher, no?
If you can predict, per person, not only the chance of an event causing a condition requiring an insurance-covered response; but also predict, per person, the size of the total insurance pay-out from a given event, then people who will need more expensive treatments for the same condition will need higher premiums. It’s like flood insurance: insuring a house closer to the coast costs more, but insuring a larger house also costs more. Because the pay-out will have to be higher to fix a larger house, even though the flood was the same. Same damage—more expensive solution required.
In the US, it is illegal to use race (or gender), both of which are highly predictive of health care costs. You can use age and smoking, but that’s about it, at least on individual issuance under ACA. The age increase is about 50% of what the true actuarial cost is, so the young subsidize the old.
The result is a healthy 26mo white man gets overcharged and a pregnant, unhealthy, overweight 40yo black woman is undercharged. Usually this just means the 26yo chooses not to get insurance.
(Men are cheaper because they don’t have as many routine medical exams, they don’t go in to the doctor generally even when they should, they don’t get pregnant and their health problems seem to include sudden out-of-hospital death more than chronic conditions. That makes them substantially cheaper to insure even if not actually “healthier”.)
Pre existing conditions and known upcoming things (like, planning to get pregnant) or superior knowledge of one’s health status and risk profile make health insurance a really defective marketplace.
Nothing to do with race, more about social standing. Black people tend to be less educated/affluent. Poor diet -> obesity -> heart attacks.
33% of whites are obese, while 48% of blacks are obese.
Much more information can be found here: https://stateofobesity.org/disparities/
>white people are more likely to develop Seasonal Affective Disorder in the same geographic region, etc.
Again, nothing to do with race. White people tend to live in places like Alaska, Maine, etc. which have long and cold (and dark) winters.
Insurers are legally forbidden from using race directly. Two people of different races who list identical details on their application should receive identical quotes.
The ACA provides a similar legal protection for gender in health insurance. We just need to extend that protection to car insurance.
Wow, I had no idea they discriminated based on race, that sounds kind of wrong to me. I mean for medical purposes it makes sense, do they also do it for auto insurance, where, in theory, your race does not make a difference?
It seems that each time a discrimination is in favor of women, there is no debate about it. It’s a strong hint that the self-named gender equality movement is not what it pretends it is.
It’s a tough philosophical question as to whether it is fair to discriminate based on gender to determine insurance rates. In the U.S. we split the difference. For car insurance and life insurance, where men have significantly greater risk, men pay more, because they cost the insurance company more. For health insurance, where women cost the insurance company more, insurance companies are forced to charge the same rates, because it’s wrong to make someone pay more for something based on an inherent trait they have no control over.
Obviously you never tried getting private insurance that covers pregnancy pre-ACA. Always a separate rider, always expensive. Whoopsie if you didn't catch that fact, failed to get a separate rider, then went on to have pregnancy complication. Hello bankruptcy! Hell, even with the pregnancy rider, a complicated pregnancy put a lot of insured people into the poorhouse.
"For health insurance, where women cost the insurance company more, insurance companies are forced to charge the same rates, because it’s wrong to make someone pay more for something based on an inherent trait they have no control over."
I don't think this hypothesis is consistent with the fact that ACA plan rates depend on your age, which you have no control over.
They split the baby on that one too. Old people can only be charged 3x as much as young people, but the actuarial difference between an 18 year old and a 65 year old is something like 10x, which used to be the price difference too.
I wonder... is there any good solution to this issue from either side? Outside of legitimate gender change (bear with me -- I know some of you don't think this is possible but lets go with the assumption) can you really blame the guy? And as an insurance company what can you do about it? I would say maybe we could have flat rates but then that just incentivizes the "good" class to go to an insurer who values their "goodness".
Per the article the EU already banned gender discrimination for insurance rates in 2011. Catch up Canada!
I wonder why it is that car insurance charges higher rates to young males(who on average cost more than young females), but medical insurance as far as I can tell is equally priced for young men and young women, even though young women generally have higher health care costs than young men(primarily through childbirth and greater use of health services).
I don't want to be cynical but I imagine if a health care company in the US or Canada actually did start charging more for some class of young women vs young men, it would make international news and lead to new anti-discrimination laws for health insurance
Let's turn this around, people have characteristics that they don't choose and can't change, but those characteristics have an impact, on average, on some real-life aspects. Would ignoring that be a net gain over whatever would be gained by not ignoring it?
British Columbia will soon support answering “not specified” for gender on identity documents. I wonder how insurance providers will cope with that. Will they demand you tell them a gender? Will they try to infer it? Will they use low-statistical-power actuarial data for the insurance usage rates of “not-specified people”?
"A crossdresser can dress like a woman in the weekends, and dress like a man during the week. Who is the goverment to tell me to keep the same sex all the time?!!!1"
how about legally recognized "contextual gender", i.e. a woman while driving the car, a man while applying jobs etc...
A male pretending to be a female has an edge over males,females and females pretending to be male when applying for jobs.. Atleast in an unscientific study by
interviewing.io
So the simple solution to this type of manipulation is adding a part to the gender change request that says "I swear under threat of legal penalty that I identify as [gender]". Doesn't hurt trans people and makes abuses of the system like this clear cases of legal fraud.
> "If you're going to declare on any document, you need to be truthful," he said. "If not, you're making a fraudulent claim. This could impact you for any future insurance application that you make, or any other aspect of your life."
Unless the insurance commissioner is going to provide an objective definition of gender that can be externally and independently verified, I'm afraid that he really has no grounds on which to claim David is a man, rather than a gender-nonconforming woman who prefers male pronouns.
Readit News
Black people have more heart attacks, white people are more likely to develop Seasonal Affective Disorder in the same geographic region, etc. It’s nothing to do with predicting behaviour, it’s just differing physiologies, causing different levels of risk of certain physiological conditions irrespective of the choices we make or how we’re raised.
As well, different races respond better or worse to different drugs. There might be a cheap way to treat hispanic people for a condition but only an expensive way to treat any other race. In that situation, if there was actuarial data saying that Hispanic person A and non-Hispanic person B had an equal chance of developing that condition, it would make sense for person B’s premiums to be higher, no?
If you can predict, per person, not only the chance of an event causing a condition requiring an insurance-covered response; but also predict, per person, the size of the total insurance pay-out from a given event, then people who will need more expensive treatments for the same condition will need higher premiums. It’s like flood insurance: insuring a house closer to the coast costs more, but insuring a larger house also costs more. Because the pay-out will have to be higher to fix a larger house, even though the flood was the same. Same damage—more expensive solution required.
The result is a healthy 26mo white man gets overcharged and a pregnant, unhealthy, overweight 40yo black woman is undercharged. Usually this just means the 26yo chooses not to get insurance.
(Men are cheaper because they don’t have as many routine medical exams, they don’t go in to the doctor generally even when they should, they don’t get pregnant and their health problems seem to include sudden out-of-hospital death more than chronic conditions. That makes them substantially cheaper to insure even if not actually “healthier”.)
Pre existing conditions and known upcoming things (like, planning to get pregnant) or superior knowledge of one’s health status and risk profile make health insurance a really defective marketplace.
Nothing to do with race, more about social standing. Black people tend to be less educated/affluent. Poor diet -> obesity -> heart attacks. 33% of whites are obese, while 48% of blacks are obese. Much more information can be found here: https://stateofobesity.org/disparities/
>white people are more likely to develop Seasonal Affective Disorder in the same geographic region, etc.
Again, nothing to do with race. White people tend to live in places like Alaska, Maine, etc. which have long and cold (and dark) winters.
The ACA provides a similar legal protection for gender in health insurance. We just need to extend that protection to car insurance.
I don't think this hypothesis is consistent with the fact that ACA plan rates depend on your age, which you have no control over.
1) men pay more
or
2) men and women pay the same
?
I wonder why it is that car insurance charges higher rates to young males(who on average cost more than young females), but medical insurance as far as I can tell is equally priced for young men and young women, even though young women generally have higher health care costs than young men(primarily through childbirth and greater use of health services).
I don't want to be cynical but I imagine if a health care company in the US or Canada actually did start charging more for some class of young women vs young men, it would make international news and lead to new anti-discrimination laws for health insurance
IIRC, in Canada, its illegal to ask those questions during the application.
Then, when HR is doing their diversity calculations, he boosts their employed woman trans numbers.
Don't see him loosing out much.
how about legally recognized "contextual gender", i.e. a woman while driving the car, a man while applying jobs etc...
/s
> "If you're going to declare on any document, you need to be truthful," he said. "If not, you're making a fraudulent claim. This could impact you for any future insurance application that you make, or any other aspect of your life."
Unless the insurance commissioner is going to provide an objective definition of gender that can be externally and independently verified, I'm afraid that he really has no grounds on which to claim David is a man, rather than a gender-nonconforming woman who prefers male pronouns.