Should Women Pay More for Health Insurance?
According to a recent New York Times article, “Women Buying Health Policies Pay a Penalty,” women are paying up to 50% more than men for private health insurance on the individual market. This discrepancy, which the industry attributes to the cost of maternal care and higher consumption of medical services by women, demonstrates yet another negative impact of for-profit insurance companies on the US health care system. Some, including John McCain, may disagree about whether health care is a human right, but necessary medical care, especially in the case of emergencies or in prevention of chronic disease, cannot be considered a commodity, if we truly value the public’s health.
For individuals or employers seeking to purchase health insurance plans, the forces of the free market have not shaped a rational or efficient system in the United States. Even health plans that do not cover maternal care end up costing women more than men of similar age and health status, making it clear that the driving force for higher costs is utilization. Young women, for whom the cost discrepancy is greatest, may consume more health care services than young men, but this necessary care, such as family planning services or pap smear testing for cervical cancer, would be encouraged by a well functioning health care system. Preventive medicine improves health and avoids more expensive interventions – like treatment of cervical cancer or maternal care for an unwanted pregnancy – later in life. However, most individuals change health plans multiple times in their adult life (20% per year in the employer based market), making the upfront costs of prevention, which may ultimately benefit a competitor, an unfavorable investment for a for-profit insurance company.
Beyond costs, when health care becomes a commodity, public health loses. Financial barriers to recommended care, such as high premiums for young women likely to access preventive care (or cost sharing for mammography or pharmaceutical benefits), achieve the goal of reducing health care utilization, and therefore costs for the insurance company, but this can be harmful for the health of a population. Financial barriers compel individuals to go without both necessary and unnecessary care, and have been shown to have deleterious effects especially among the poor and elderly. We need a health care system that controls cost by encouraging prevention, promoting evidence based medicine, and eliminating private insurers’ profits from the balance sheet. But we cannot skimp on care. We need a system that truly values each individual’s right to high quality health care and right to their highest attainable status of health and wellness. Left up to the markets, we get a system that penalizes women for accessing necessary care, which is both unjust and unwise.
posted by Aaron Fox
This is unjustified,biased and discriminatory for penalizing women by charging higher premium.If they’re loosing their money,it should be spread equally over the entire masses.This is what the insurance is.
The real problem that is probably going to be unearthed is that we probably have a legacy of underfunding in healthcare issues that goes back decades and only now is it starting to come to the surface when we all realise that there are more people at rock bottom than was first imagined. The double whammy to all of this is that to fix it is going to possibly take more finance than we have available.
Why does it seem that when women pay more, there is a huge bitching session that starts that WE are hard done by an the government should step in to protect us. Ladies, if you look at most government around the world they are not very good at managing our lives, why would we want them in our wallets, our bedrooms and now in our wombs. Sorry, not for me. If I use a service more I should pay more.
Men pay alot more for insurance because they use it more, as well they should.
This is a fundamental meeting of objective and subjective – Where the free market forces come up against a bigger picture.
By all measures of objectivity and normal insurance actuarial analysis, anyone at higher risk or higher system demand will have higher premiums. That means that anyone more likely to use the health insurance system will be charged more.
BUT
As a society a more subjective view is that certain health-system-heavy people might have an argument for being looked after. For example if we want healthy children brought up into our future, it might be better to look after them in their youth and prenatally.
The only way the 2 can meet is with regulation. Otherwise the accountants within insurance companies will increase the system-loader’s premiums – whether that is good for society or not.
Nice post! On the first day of the female reproductive health course that Einstein 2nd year medical students take, the course director said that a women’s right to plan her family lay the foundation for her civil rights. A woman who is not enabled to plan how many or when to have children has lost the resource of time, which directly affects how much education or what job she achieves. In a wide range of work fields, women candidates are passed over for men, who do not need to take a maternal leave. Furthermore, most women get pregnant during the second through fourth decades of life, which are often the most crucial for education and careers. Planned well, a pregnancy can be wonderful. Unplanned, a pregnancy drastically affects a woman’s life trajectory, leading to decreased autonomy.
In addition for many women, abortion is not an option due to access, finances, or values; once pregnant, there is no turning back. For these women, preventive medicine is the only medicine that allows the preservation of their civil rights. While provision of maternal care remains an important topic, the lack of access to family planning has already detracted from that woman’s autonomy. Thus, one can argue that young women are paying more than men for their autonomy and rights by being forced to pay more for preventive health, and any penalty dealt–financial or otherwise–directly impedes gender equality.