More than one report found that women are still paying more for health insurance than men are. Some states have not banned gender rating, and most insurance companies are not interested in making changes to how they price health insurance plans.
The National Women’s Law Center is a research and advocacy group. They are the group that recently compiled a list that showed that there were plenty of Catholic institutions that had employer sponsored health plans that were covering birth control before the controversy over this coverage started.
Soon, the National Women’s Law Center will release a report that shows that women are still paying more for health insurance than men are. This matches data that was compiled by eHealthInsurance.com. The website is an online source of health insurance.
The Affordable Care Act will prohibit insurance companies from doing something called “gender rating” beginning in 2014. Gender rating is a term that is used to describe a practice that health insurance companies have been doing for a very long time. It means that the insurer is charging women more than they are charging men for the exact same health insurance coverage.
Some states have already banned health insurance companies from engaging in gender rating. In the states that have not banned it, more than 90% of the best selling health insurance plans are charging more in premiums when the customer is female than they do when the customer is male. In other words, insurance companies are still giving quotes that include gender rating, and age rating, unless they are in a state that has prohibited them, by law, from doing so.
Why do women get charged more than men? It isn’t due to the cost of maternity care. Right now, unless a person has employer sponsored health insurance, her health plan is going to exclude coverage for maternity. Right now, if a woman wants to have her health insurance cover maternity, she has to purchase an extra rider for it, (which bring the cost of her premium up even higher).
In 2014, health insurance companies will be prohibited from charging women more for health insurance premiums than the amount that they charge for men. This probably doesn’t mean that women can soon expect to be quoted the lower premiums that men are getting right now. Instead, insurers will likely choose to increase the cost of men’s premiums so that it matches what women are being charged.
There is potential, however, that charging men a higher price for health insurance than what they are being charged right now could cause an insurer to lose customers. If that happens, then it might be possible that insurers will bring both men’s and women’s premiums down to a reasonable, and affordable rate.
Image by Deborah Austin on Flickr