Health Insurance: Bastion of Gender-based Pricing
May 13, 2009
by Jewell
|“Jewell” is the nom de plume for a co-founder of The New Agenda.
As the debate over healthcare continues to build steam, interest groups are covering their bases to ensure their needs are met (or at least not hurt much). President Obama continues to meet with health industry and business leaders who pledged to cut the rate of spending increases by $2 trillion over 10 years.
How will those cuts affect women? Health plans – one of the biggest drivers of costs with continual premium hikes – have agreed to do some belt tightening, but women should be asking how much and where?
A Sacramento Bee story today says health insurance for women remains a bastion of gender-based pricing.
According to the story:
A self-employed 30-year-old woman living in midtown Sacramento could pay as much as $420 a year more for individual health insurance than a man…
The gender gap, known as “gender rating” by the insurance industry, recently has gained renewed attention. Last week, the insurance industry said it was willing to drop gender pricing – but only if the government requires every U.S. resident to obtain health insurance as part of a comprehensive health care overhaul.
“A lot of people didn’t know that insurers were charging women more than men, and how much more,” said Lisa Codispoti, a senior counsel with the National Women’s Law Center. Her group produced a report last fall exposing a gap in premiums paid by men and women for health insurance. The National Women’s Law Center study looked at rates paid by men and women of similar age if they were enrolled in one of nearly 350 plans offered by insurance companies. In some cases, some women paid as much as 48 percent more than men.
California outlawed gender-based pricing a decade ago for such services as dry cleaning and haircuts, but not health insurance – arguably more important than a haircut and dry cleaning. Women may use more health care services, but without the female reproductive system there wouldn’t be future generations!
Making matters worse, a new Commonwealth Fund study found that high costs are keeping women from getting needed health care. About half (52%) of working-age women, compared with 39 percent of men, report not being able to fill a prescription, go to the doctor, or get a medical test.
Seven of 10 working-age women have no health insurance coverage or inadequate coverage, medical bill or debt problems, or problems getting needed health care because of cost.
Women who are insured but have inadequate coverage are especially vulnerable: 69 percent of underinsured women have problems accessing care because of costs, compared with half (49%) of underinsured men.
Women are more affected by high health care costs because they have lower average incomes and use the health care system more often making out-of-pocket health costs higher than they are for men.
Last week’s turnabout by the insurance industry is a squeeze play resulting from the growing momentum for healthcare reform in 2009. Insurers do not want to be seen as an obstacle, and they’re worried about a government-backed health plan that could take customers from commercial providers.
Many of us may remember the outrage over gender inequity in the way health plans failed to cover oral contraception while covering Viagra and other impotency drugs. Might be time to let them know how we feel again.
Write the President
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Send a message to America’s Health Insurance Plans
If we give BIRTH to males half the time, why the hell shouldn’t they pay some of that? Christ, the way they act, they totally forget that prenatal health care AFFECTS THEM TOO. Unless they spontaneously generate by some other means in order to reproduce. Dumbasses.
I have a sneaking suspicion that in all this haggling with the insurers, the women are going to get shafted. The government-backed health plan should be a real option, not just some haggling device.
And agreed with Janis 100%. Women should go on a reproductive strike. Even if 10% of the women did this, we’ll have these morons panicking and then they’ll listen to us. Otherwise we can be safely ignored.
Thank you Jewel!
There is an interesting report, “Roadblocks to Healthcare: Why the Current Health Care System does not work for Women,” at the government website: http://www.healthreform.gov/re.....index.html
We should not tolerate women having to pay more for health insurance, just as we do not tolerate the practice of using race as a factor in setting insurance rates.
Only a single-payer approach to healthcare reform will END THE INHUMANITY OF OUR FAILED HEALTHCARE INSURANCE SYSTEM, WHERE PROFITS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN PATIENTS’ HEALTH, and people are dying because of it.
Only a single-payer approach will end the current disgraceful practice of insurance companies’ engaging in blatant gender discrimination, refusing to pay for medical treatment, denying claims, and engaging in rampant price gouging that discourages patients from going to the doctor and has resulted in 50 million Americans without healthcare and 87 million Americans without health insurance at some point in the past 2 years.
HR 676, The United States National Health Insurance Act (in the House), and S 703, The American Health Security Act (in the Senate) would ensure that every American, regardless of gender, income, employment status, or race, has access to quality, affordable health care services.
Read the earlier excellent New Agenda Post, “Why women need universal single-payer health care here: http://thenewagenda.net/2009/0.....alth-care/
TAKE ACTION:
1. ASK your Senators to co-sponsor S 703, The American Health Security Act.
2. ASK your Representative to co-sponsor HR 676, The United States National Health Insurance Act. (75 Representatives have signed on as co-sponsors so far).
You can find your legislators’ contact information here: http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
3. ASK Obama to support Single Payer reform: http://www.healthreform.gov/contact/index.html
Phone: Comments: 202-456-1111;?Switchboard: 202-456-1414; FAX: 202-456-2461
We need to insist upon the single payer option. I had no idea that women pay more. I wonder how we can find out if our company is doing that? Probably mine is since it is BCBS.
But above and beyond the single payer issue is this: I do not think we should have “levels” of health care options. I think that everyone should have the “high option” as the only option. Else you still have the poorest people having to select the “basic” option due to cost differences, thereby getting lower quality care. My insurance paid 90%, when I was working, of my insulin pump cost. Some people have to pay 50% to get it, if they have insurance. The cost is $6500 just for the pump, not to mention ongoing supplies. Just one example.
A-nell, ER –
Did you see this? http://www.thenation.com/blogs.....ors_nurses
Thank you Jewell! Terrific article!
Take a look at this blog:
“Why Women Must Lead the Fight for Health Care Reform” :
http://www.care2.com/causes/he.....re-reform/
The health insurance companies are at it again. First, they said they’d end discrimination against women only on their terms – if all Americans were forced to buy health insurance and if there was no public option. Both terms would benefit the insurance companies and increase their profits while harming the rest of us, especially women. http://thenewagenda.net/2009/0.....imination/
Now, the insurance companies are taking back their ‘promise’ to control costs. It affects their profits.
Read about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05.....38;emc=rss
It’s what we’ve known all along: we can’t trust the insurance industry with health care reform.
Only a single-payer approach to healthcare reform will end the inhumanity of our failed healthcare insurance system, where profits are more important than patients’ health, and where people die because of it.
Our fight against the insurance companies’ discrimination against women, and for equal access to healthcare for all, is about democracy, human rights, civil rights, and basic human decency.
HR 676, The United States National Health Insurance Act (in the House), and S 703, The American Health Security Act (in the Senate) would ensure that every American, regardless of gender,, income, employment status, or race, has access to quality, affordable health care services.
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