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Thursday, June 26, 2008

Apropos of My Morning News Two Days Ago

posted by on June 26 at 16:19 PM

One of the stories I mentioned was about how Blue Shield is raising premiums for female members—even though the insurer doesn’t cover pregnancy and maternity care.

Perhaps this is partly because women are more likely to seek preventive care, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. But this should make them better insurance risks. After all, they’re proactively working to stay healthy.

And isn’t that exactly what insurers encourage people to do?

It doesn’t make any sense,” said Alice Wolfson of United Policyholders, a San Francisco-based advocacy group. “The insurers aren’t assessing risk. They’re assessing how much healthcare is used, even when it’s preventive treatment.”

Anyway, some commenters seemed to think that penalizing women for living longer and taking better care of themselves was basically the same thing as charging men more for car insurance because they’re bigger accident risks. I didn’t address it further at the time, but to my pleasant surprise, one of the ladies at Jezebel did just today. Turns out charging women more doesn’t just make no sense—it makes no sense in a whole shit-ton of different ways. For example, insurers are charging women more based not on HOW they use it, but WHETHER they use it—a decision that actually costs them more in the long run.

So, if you’re a young single woman on birth control who goes to the doctor when you have a mild case of bronchitis instead of going to the emergency room if it becomes pleurisy (a real disease! my friend had it last year) or pneumonia, then you’re supposed to be in better shape price-wise because you’re being cost-efficient. But if insurance companies are pricing insurance based on if you use it — as has happened in other insurance fields, such as homeowner’s insurance — then any usage, even if it’s efficient in the long-term, will ratchet up your costs over time and discourage you from utilizing the very insurance you’re paying for. Gotta love a market failure!

The writer also posits that this ain’t a problem that’s going away any time soon. More and more insurance plans are being marketed specifically to men, “if for no other reason then than 29 percent of women are dependent on someone else’s insurance and only 13 percent of men are.” In fact,

fully half of men are primary insurance holders, while only slight more than a third of women are — meaning even if they’re less than half the population, they’re the population for whom insurance plans will most likely be designed and to whom those plans will most likely be marketed. And then they’ll just charge us extra for all that stuff that guys aren’t using, and because they can.

So even if you’re not technically using it, just having that uterus will cost you extra.

So ladies—in addition to the cost of birth control ($260 a year if you’ve got a $20 copay like I do), the fact that insurance companies won’t let you get more than one pill pack at a time (don’t want the ladies getting all hopped up on progestin!), and the fact that routine preventive care like lab tests at the gynecologist is frequently subject to a large deductible even though it saves the insurance companies money—add this one to your list of Reasons the “Health Care” Industry is Fucking Evil.

RSS icon Comments

1

This is why actuarial sciences is evil!

Posted by Bellevue Ave | June 26, 2008 4:33 PM
2

Hey. Isn't being female genetic? GINA banned genetic discrimination by insurance companies. Just saying.

Posted by elenchos | June 26, 2008 4:40 PM
3

THANK YOU for mentioning my least favorite part of health insurance. It really freaks me out that I can only get 3 months of pills at a time, and can't reorder until I'm on my last pack. Aren't you supposed to have a 3-month supply of meds on hand at all times in case of emergency? What if Armageddon happens right when I start the last pack? Am I supposed to give up sex just because it's the apocalypse?

Posted by giantladysquirrels | June 26, 2008 4:48 PM
4

Hey, can't you get birth control filled for three months at a time? i'd try to see a doctor, usually they can prescribe it to you that way. my sister gets four packs every three months and that way she only has to pay the copay once, and so it costs a fourth of what it would cost normally. but yeah, insurance pretty much blows.

Posted by Cook | June 26, 2008 5:00 PM
5

Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Erica C. Barnett Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism. Sexism.

Posted by Jubilation T. Cornball | June 26, 2008 5:02 PM
6

one service not mentioned in the LA times article is cervical cancer screening, which begins (ideally, at least) once a woman becomes sexually active, and continues annually throughout the rest of her adult life. this costs healthcare providers a lot of money and (obviously) only pertains to women. there are no corollaries for men that i am aware of.

anyway, this seems like a logical reason for the discrepancy in premiums -- albeit a lame one, since it's preventative care. just throwin' it out there.

Posted by brandon | June 26, 2008 5:11 PM
7

Cook @ 4: No, my insurance company won't let me. They actually even make me wait until the very end of the month to get the next month's supply.

Posted by ECB | June 26, 2008 5:27 PM
8

Agreed. Healthcare for profit produces such results as a matter of course.

It does seem like they're rewarding men for their tendency to avoid visits to the doctor unless they're bleeding profusely or missing a limb. I guess if a guy dies of a heart attack at home because he didn't think his chest pain was serious it's a cost savings for the provider.

Posted by flamingbanjo | June 26, 2008 6:21 PM
9

Good thing all your friends and parents voted GOP in 2000 and 2004 - now you can enjoy the lack of socialized national health care plans!

Posted by Will in Seattle | June 26, 2008 7:20 PM
10

#3 - if Armageddon strikes, 3 months is the "cooling off" period, then they want use to populate! it's part of the plan.

I've had girlfriends deal with this 3 month pill thing, and ECB is correct, sounds like a real pain in the ass.

Posted by Dougsf | June 26, 2008 7:55 PM
11

ECB- save yourself the $20 a month and get an IUD. Your body will thank you for not washing it with artificial hormones. And once it's in, you can forget about it for four or five years.

Posted by devils advocate | June 26, 2008 8:19 PM
12

I'm sorry, but how is 12 times $20 working out to $260?

In addition to all their other superpowers, to women get a whole extra month?

Posted by Judah | June 26, 2008 10:18 PM
13

Judah: um... 365 days divided into 28-day cycles (hope I don't have to explain that to you) is 13
cycles, hence $260. Really not that confusing.

Posted by ECB | June 26, 2008 11:15 PM
14

@ 12 & 13

this reminds me of the time i had to explain to my high school boyfriend that we girls didn't just bleed for like "2 hours" at the end of each month, but that we actually bled all day long for 5-7 days each month. and this was BEFORE abstinence only sex-ed. i really have no hope for all the little judahs running around. that generation is going to be so fucked (without condoms!) because of all the backwards info they received.

Posted by bridget | June 27, 2008 12:58 AM
15

ECB: You should have let Judah believe we have superpowers, like the ability bring in the tides and commune with the moon phases.

Posted by Mary F | June 27, 2008 7:16 AM
16

hey doesn't it suck when you have to pay more just because of what is between your legs?. Men have been putting up with this for a while now, and now its your turn, deal with it.

But its not right you say?, the whole men-pay-more-for-car-insurance is becoming a thing of the past because more recent studies up here in the frozen north are showing that its all BS, and in fact women are more likely to cause accidents, something most men would have been able to tell you all along. Did women ever care?, nope, they just laughed and said oh well, you pay more. Now the shoe's on the other foot, enjoy!

Posted by Wurm | June 27, 2008 7:54 AM
17

$260 a year? ECB, get a Mirena. It's a one-time cost of about $260, but will last much longer (about 5 years if memory serves), delivers a much lower systemic dose of hormones, and is more effective overall because you can't forget it.

Posted by Uplift | June 27, 2008 10:34 AM

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