California Health Insurance and Women
The city of San Francisco has filed suit against California insurance regulators alleging that they have approved a health insurance rating system that allows California health insurance companies to charge women more than men for health insurance coverage.
In the state of California, gender rating is permitted in setting health insurance rates, which allows a customers gender to be used as a rating factor in determining their health insurance premium. A practice that has resulted in women paying on average 39% more than men for identical coverage.
Currently 10 states outlaw the practice of gender rating with regard to individual health insurance rates, however California is not one of them.
Blue Shield of California representatives have claimed that their actuaries crunched the numbers based on healthcare data and indeed found that women are more injury prone than men and more likely to break bones or become sick, thus justifying the relevance of using gender as a rating factor.
