Friday, September 18, 2009

Gender Equity in Health Insurance?

Excerts from the Huffington Post article by:

Morgan Carroll
State Senator for SD 29 in Aurora, Colorado
Posted: September 15, 2009 12:38 AM

Nope. Not according to the Colorado Association of Health Plans and the Colorado Association of Insurance Underwriters.

Here's what we know:

* Gender rating has been a prohibited practice of gender discrimination in the small and large group employer-provided insurance markets since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as confirmed by the United States Supreme Court.

* Women are charged as much as 30 - 40% more than men for the same coverage in individual health insurance plans.

If a person does not have access to health insurance through their employer and they are not otherwise legally indigent, the only place he or she can get coverage is in the individual health insurance market where:

* They can refuse to underwrite people (for any price) for pre-existing conditions (and some carriers count pregnancy as a "pre-existing condition").

* The rates are already significantly higher than in the small or large group market.
* The more the individual health market fails women the more uninsured women and children we have at a greater cost to the system.


Read More

No comments:

Post a Comment