Gender Inequality in Insurance Premiums
The spilled milk joke was just terrible, but shortly after that the president’s talk of equal insurance premiums for men and women reeled me back in to his State of the Union address. I’ve blogged on the side subject of mandatory maternity coverage but never directly about the discrepancy in premiums. Women pay more than men for health insurance, but men pay more than women for life insurance. Add the latter to the premium puzzle, and it’s basic cost analysis. Women go to the doctor more often than men because of routine annual visits. This costs health insurance companies more money. Men die younger than women. This costs life insurance companies more money. Premiums reflect these gender implications.
Still, we have to weigh out the two different types of insurance. Your family’s future financial life may depend on life insurance but not their actual physical lives. Our bodies, our health, that we rely on health insurance to protect. The discrepancies don’t negate each other. The president’s remarks inspired me to do a little more research on the subject. Ten states currently have bans on gender rating within the individual market - Maine, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, and Washington.
Kentucky tried a gender ban in the nineties, but it was a disaster. Insurance carriers ended up leaving the state only to return when the ban was lifted. The argument to oppose a federal ban can be seen in the microcosm of Kentucky’s experiment. Raising rates on low-risk individuals (young men) caused that group of insureds to drop their plans.
What will happen in 2014, I don’t know. What I do know is that the new plans introduced by federal and state government are not banded by gender. They are banded by age. If you want to move on to the issue of age discrimination, give AARP a call. 
For more information on government-funded insurance programs, call us at (888) 919-9876.
