Health Insurance Blog

A recent study undertaken by online health insurance marketplace ehealthinsurance.com found that individual health insurance can indeed be affordable if you shop around.

Specifically, the study of more than 225,000 individual and family health plans purchased through their site found that the average monthly premium to insure an individual was $158, and more than half of those underlying policies had a monthly premium of less than $130!  When insuring a family, the average monthly premium was $366 with more than half paying less than $300 per month.

To build on a previous health insurance study that was blogged about here, women paid more for their health insurance coverage, 18% more to be exact.  On average women paid $171 per month while men paid $145 on average.

Other findings:

• 60% of children’s health plans had monthly premiums of less than $100.  These do not include state sponsored and subsidized children’s health plans which have income limits for qualification.
• Regionally the Midwest was the cheapest region with average monthly premiums of $130, followed by the West region ($150), South ($154), and Northeast ($239)
• Average monthly premium for HSA health plans was $133

There have been several articles published within the last week, most notably in the New York Times regarding health insurance rates paid by women compared to rates paid by men.  The article used health insurance quote data gathered from such health insurance companies as Humana, Aetna, and Wellpoint as well as online health insurance marketplace ehealthinsurance.com, and state high-risk pools.

The article in the New York Times sites several examples of price discrepancies between women and men of similar ages for identical coverage levels at various health insurance companies.  The data is rather compelling as the health insurance rate differences are in the 30-50% range.  However, does anyone really believe that health insurance companies are unfairly setting rates artificially high for women?

The article mentions the comparatively high health care expenses for women during child bearing years, but later dispels this as the sole explanation siting that the wide range in premiums couldn’t possibly be justified by actuarial analysis.

It would have been a more compelling analysis, and further solidified the argument if the author went on to compare health insurance rates for a 60 year old man vs women, an age when men’s health issues become more prominent.

After a quick analysis comparing rates on ehealthinsurance.com, an elderly man can expect to pay about 5% more than an elderly women for identical coverage levels.  The results of this quick test were not quite the results that I was looking for that would invalidate the argument that women are being gouged on their health insurance rates.  But my gut feeling tells me that the disparity between a women’s and men’s expected health care costs in their mid 30s, for example, are indeed magnitudes apart, and health insurance  companies are appropriately planning for potential claims.

The department of insurance (DOI) in each state must approve health insurance premiums based on claims history, and actuarial analysis, and would not approve rates if the this analysis didn’t support the rates  they requested.