Silly Me
The reality is that there are cost differentials on a number of variables. It’s socially acceptable to pass some of those differentials on to consumers, but not others. You can’t charge someone more for health insurance because they’re a woman or because they’re gay. But you can charge smokers more.
Society has decided to make gay people and women protected classes. For all sorts of (mostly good) reasons. Society has decided to make the opposite decision about smokers for all sorts of (mostly good) reasons.
Deal with it.
Mike … if women are being charged more for health insurance premiums, it isn’t because they are women. It’s because the fact of being a woman carries with it different health risks than the fact of being a man. This isn’t sexism afoot … it’s a matter of statistics.
When I go to the barber, the sign on the way says that a man’s haircut is $17, while a woman’s is $25. Again, this isn’t because the barbers hate women (indeed, many of them are women). It’s because the average woman’s hairstyle requires more work than the average man’s.
When we talk about protected classes, we talk in terms of basic equality of treatment … like “equal pay for equal work.” We don’t talk about equal pay for unequal work. This is a huge point. A barber can charge women more because it’s more costly to service a woman; similarly, an insurer can charge women more where it’s more costly to insure a woman. Our commitment to equality does not require that we provide services to certain classes as some kind of loss leader.
So will it be okay if the government decides to charge African-American men/women more then Caucasian men/women? What if the entity that sets health care costs, such as premiums for example, deems that being African-American carries different, more serious, health risks?
Slippery slope.
I’m not a fan of the slippery slope argument.
Jeff: what I’m saying is that certain risk premiums for protected classes are shouldered by the entire group equally. This is a decision that we’ve made at a societal level, and one that we’re unlikely to reverse any time soon. You can argue that it’s unfair for one reason or another. Depending on your argument you’d be right.
This doesn’t change the fact that we’ve made this decision. Personally I support this decision. I think it’s unfair to charge women extra premiums because of their sex. I feel similarly about charging gay people extra — and charging gay people extra introduces all sorts of additional problems (people pretending to be straight, leading to worse medical advice, et cetera).
It’s legitimate to charge more for a woman’s haircut. It would also be legitimate to charge more for her health insurance. We’ve simply decided not to do so.
