Colorado House Bill 1008: force men to pay higher insurance premiums

February 9th, 2010 | by Brian Schwartz |

The Denver Post reports that Colorado “House Bill 1008 would bar health insurance companies from using gender as a basis for setting different premium rates for men and women.” Basically, insurers generally charge women higher premiums than men.  Supporters of the bill want to make this illegal, and hence require men to pay more.

The Colorado Independent reports that “insurance companies agreed not to oppose the bill.”  Interesting. One cynical reason I can imagine is that insurers are forced to charge men more, and hence make more money. Their competitors must do the same, so it’s not as if the male customers are free to buy a competitor’s cheaper product.

This bill would then make insurance a vehicle for forced charity. This is wrong.

Or maybe insurers will charge women less, not be able to profit from it, and hence design their plans such that women do not want them.

This is about free trade, to the extent the politicians have allowed it in insurance markets.  This bill would force men to pay more for their insurance, even though male customers and insurers would otherwise agree to a lower price.  Politicians have no right to interfere with such a voluntary transaction.

If insurance companies are over-charging women, it sounds like a great opportunity for a competitor to swoop in and offer better prices. Too bad politicians forbid individuals from buying more affordable policies available in other states.  Or if competitors are not offering better prices, maybe there’s a reason.

Some might point to sexism.  I cannot imagine a greedy insurance executive being so misogynist that he would not want women as customers. After all, wouldn’t such a disturbing individual want women to be dependent on his product for something as important as medical care?

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  • Jackie
    I think you are missing the point of this bill. The object is not to charge men more, but to outlaw charging women more simply because they are women. The bill says gender rating will be considered discriminatory and illegal, that's all, nothing about charging men more. No offense, but it's pretty typical of a man who may not be aware of his own privilege to turn this around and make it be about hurting men instead of helping women. Even if it means men paying more (which is not a definite because there appears to be no data on similar laws in different states at this time), so what? Boo hoo, they'll have to pay the same amount as women. How is that wrong, exactly? Right now a nonsmoking woman pays more than a smoking man of the same age in CO. One excuse is that maternity care is expensive, but private CO insurance does not cover maternity care. Figure that one out...
  • wakalix
    Jackie, as I note in a post from earlier this week, men pay higher premiums than women for life insurance. Do you think politicians should prohibit this practice?

    I do not think insurers charge women more "simply because they are women." I think they charge more because insures anticipate, based on actuarial data, that women make more expensive claims, or more claims total.

    You say the legislation is not about charging men more. OK. How do you expect insurers to respond by politicians prohibit them from charging market rates to women? Sure, they could charge men more to cover the lost revenue. But they might not. They could start skimping on the benefits of women's plans, deny more claims, etc.

    Regardless, this is wrong because people have the right to voluntarily associate with one another. You do not have the right to force a someone to sell a product at a price he or she does not want to sell it at.
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