‘The media falsely report that gender-based pricing in health insurance uniquely penalizes women’
From Phil Leigh, a Florida reader, on the recent controversy over gender & health care costs:
The New York Times and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams recently reported falsely that gender-based pricing in the independent healthcare insurance market uniquely penalized women. In truth, gender pricing sometimes results in men paying more and sometimes in women paying more. Unfortunately, both the Times and NBC Nightly News chose to ignore the facts and focus only on the age groups where women pay more.
Generally, at ages 55 and over, men pay more. Moreover, the premiums at ages 55 and over are much larger than at the ages examined by the Times and NBC.
It all started on October 30th with a Times article by Robert Pear entitled “Women Buying Healthcare Policies Pay a Penalty”. This was followed by an editorial on November 3rd entitled “Gouging Women on Health Insurance”. NBC aired its segment around the same time, apparently prompted by the Times coverage.
Pear’s article compared prices for men and women at ages 25, 30, and 40. Not surprisingly, his data revealed that women pay more. His source was website eHealth, which provides a calculator based upon zip code, gender, and age. However, if he had used the same calculator for ages 55 and above, his data would have revealed that men pay more.
For example, in my zip code a 63-year-old male pays $569 a month for an Aetna policy with $2,500 deductable. The same policy for a woman is $483. Thus, the man pays 18% more. Additionally, the man’s premium at age 63 is nearly three-times the amount for a 40 year old man whereas the same policy for a 63-year-old woman is only one-and-a-half times more than for a 40-year-old woman.
In general I have a high regard for The New York Times, especially the Technology and Business sections. However, in matters of gender there is a lace curtain that blocks any commentary inconsistent with a females-are-always-victims agenda. When their articles merely reflect opinion or attitude, it’s not so egregious, but when they choose to ignore the facts, they should be held accountable.
As the reader may suspect, I wrote Times editorial to point out the errors in Pear article, but they ignored my letter and proceeded with an equally erroneous editorial.
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