Comments on: Women Charged Higher Health Insurance Rates

By: Margie

Margie — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:36:01 +0000

A friend of mine did not have insurance through her work, so she was buying her own policy. She had the option to opt in or out on the pregnancy coverage. For me if I were buying my own insurance and could save money and opt out of something that I was not using like pregnancy coverage, I would want that option.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:12:57 +0000

This reminds me of a funny story – I was working somewhere with two men (and several more women) on staff, and the big boss (a man) was looking at changing our insurance coverage to cut costs. The changes included a decrease in prescription drug coverage, among other things. I mentioned to him in a staff meeting about the possible changes that pricing all of us young, fertile women out of our birth control might not exactly turn out to be a cost-saving measure.

By: Margaret

Margaret — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:59:02 +0000

Cynical me: I think insurance companies have this in mind: men cost less because they die younger and when they get sick/terminally ill they have family women around to do a lot of nursing for free. Because a woman lives a longer and healthier life she’ll be paying higher premiums for longer making really good profits for the insurance company – and when it’s her turn to get sick/ terminally ill, she has no man to look after her and ends up requiring more expensive care.

I see from the post above that insurance companies haven’t really provided actual reasons for the different premiums though…

By: vesta44

vesta44 — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:47:14 +0000

This doesn’t surprise me at all, especially after reading Annie’s post on Boombatti about the woman in Oregon whose lung cancer had been in remission for 2 years. Her cancer came back, her oncologist prescribed chemotherapy, and her state health coverage refused to pay for it, but would pay for her assisted suicide. WTF!? What kind of messed up world is it when an insurance company refuses to pay for medical care, but will pay for killing you? Die now, or die later because we refuse to treat you. If you want to avoid the agony of dying from cancer without treatment, kill yourself, that we’ll pay for.
I’ll admit it, I’m a vindictive witch. When I read that, all I could think was that I hope the insurance person who made that decision has the same thing happen to them. Then maybe they’ll learn some compassion.