Insurance and Genders
Women are charged more for insurance than men. About 40 percent more according to The Today Show. The show touted the idea of equal rates for men and women. The issue is this, women have higher medical bills. As a result women are required to pay more for insurance. If the question of insurance were not based on the likely average cost of payout to the consumer group then insurance could be uniform among all groups of people. So you would have diabetics, heart patients and cancer patients all being charged a flat rate, the same as otherwise healthy people.
What would this result in? Higher rates for the people with low medical bills. As a result it becomes no longer viable for them to purchase insurance. As a result they forego insurance. As a result the cost gets passed on to those who are more likely to have higher medical bills. Viola it is back to square one. They pay higher rates once again and healthy people are forced to go without insurance.
It was argued on The Today Show that a large part of the higher women’s insurance is due to child bearing. In order not to be discouraged from child bearing, there should be no higher insurance rates for women. A better idea is to subsidize the child bearing costs directly by the government without burdening the private sector with these costs.
The government can’t meddle in the markets without everyone paying for it. That is something we are still learning.
