(no subject)

[andrewducker]

The EU is considering legislation to ban gender-based discrimination for all kinds of insurance (including life insurance and car insurance). The couple of people I know in the insurance business consider this mad, because women and men have different variances of both survival and claims. In fact, this is one area where women would be _worse_ off when discrimination is removed.

[Poll #201685]

Comments

[nickys.livejournal.com]

Tricky one, that.

On balance I'd say that so long as insurance companies do actually have the (independently verifiable) statistics to back things up then it is fair enough, because they use so many factors in risk assessment that the actual difference caused by gender and race are going to be fairly small compared to other factors like postcode and whether you have a garage.

My gut feeling would be that the race thing wouldn't make much difference - age is probably a much bigger factor (especially for men) than ethnic origin, but it might be the case that for example Asians in the UK might be generally safer drivers as well as being higher academic achievers.

[elwe.livejournal.com]

Actually, at least for life and health insurance, race can be a major factor; this difference in healthcare needs was, in fact, one of the objections to Proposition 54 in California's recent election which would have barred the government from collecting any racial information at all: ; "This ban on racial information would be particularly troubling in regard to health care and education. In health care, for example, state collected information shows how African Americans and Latinos have a disproportionately high level of infant mortality, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer." (some random article (http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/august15-03/comment2.htm))

[seidl.livejournal.com]

As so far the only person who said race difference shouldn't be taken into account, I feel I need to explain my position.

Mostly, I don't feel that society is up to the point where there can really be 'correct' statistics regarding racial differences. I just don't trust the numbers. Anything blamed on race, I'd probably shift to socio-economic issues, or where you live, or some other thing. I fully believe that there are some things that women do better than men (and the reverse is also true). I'm much less convinced that someone with black skin or asian features has the same fundamental difference in ability. Of course, race may result in other measurable differences (a higher percentage of minorities in the US and UK live below the poverty line, and thus in high crime areas. Living in a high crime area will probably increase your car insurance). But does being black mean you drive worse?

Now, at the point that genetic tests become more reliable, and they're use is allowed for this kind of thing, then I could see the resulst of the tests effecting insurance. 'I'm sorry, but you have a marker that increases your chance of a heart attack 10 fold, we want an extra 5 bucks a month in insurance from you'. But thats independent of the idea of 'race'.

I guess, really, I want some more scientific definition of the differences. Men vs. Women there are gene differences (something about that pesky Y). When you can point to the differences in the genome between two people, then I'll accept that as a factor. But just looking at their skin or where they were born seems too prone to personal bias.

[elwe.livejournal.com]

On other other hand, insurance companies have a strong commercial interest in having the most accurate statistics possible for setting prices, and there are statistical techniques for account for the effects of confounding factors like socioeconomic class. And if insurance company A is biased and overcharges people of race Z for insurance, insurance company B which is not biased can make a good deal of money selling insurance to people of race Z for a smaller (but still profitable) amount of money.

[seidl.livejournal.com]

Sure, I trust insurance companies to have huge databases and do their best to make money. I just don't think 'race' is a well defined enough term to really make decisions based on. As an example, for some time in the US past people of african american descent were thought to have poor night vision. Therefor, they couldn't serve in combat roles on warships nor probably get good car insurance rates. Is this genetic (i.e. part of race?). I don't think so. It might have been true at one time due to poor diet (either through poverty or slavery), but then that should go in the diet category

I'm also unclear on howwo you really classify someone according to race. If I was born in the US, from a father who was born in Germany and a mother who was born in the US who's parents were born in Russia ... am I american, German, Russian, or some strange mix? Russia is a big place, maybe I'm not really russian but instead Ukrainian Or even Kievien. If my doc decided that I had a gene that sid I'd have low cholesterol levels, then sure I'd want a break on my insurance. But should I get one just because of where my great grand parents were born?

[elwe.livejournal.com]

I fully agree with you about the problems with the concept of race. But insurance companies, precisely because of their huge databases, know far better than you or me whether " 'race' is a well defined enough term to really make decisions based on" in this context.

In particular, neither of the problems you mentioned really applies in this situation. Insurance companies don't say "African americans have bad night vision; we must charge them higher rates for car insurance." Rather, if when they look at their database they see that as a group people of race Z are more expensive for them after correcting for all other risk factors (that is, if being of race Z adds additional risk over and above any socioeconomic or other factors correlated with race Z), they will raise their prices relative to others. In other words, people of races Z will be charged more only if they are in fact empirically found to be higher risk, not if they are mistakenly though to be, as in the example with night--vision.

(difficulty of definition of race is also not very relevant in this context. As long as the insurance companies are consistent in whatever scheme of classification they use, the resulting way of dividing people will work just the same -- if the difference between groups under this division is statistically significant they will work it into their pricing decisions; if it is not, they will not)

As for "If my doc decided that I had a gene that said I'd have low cholesterol levels, then sure I'd want a break on my insurance. But should I get one just because of where my great grand parents were born?", I'm not sure what the `should' means here. From a moral (for lack of a better word) perspective, you have no more and no less control over your good cholesterol gene than over your race, so it is not more or less fair to give you lower rates on one or the other.

[shannon_a]

I answered "shouldn't be allowed" on both queries.

Generally, I'd support an insurance system where different rates based on congenital differences are simply not allowed: sex-based, race-based, or mitochondrial-DNA-based; it's all aspects of the same thing.

Whatever the basis, you're punishing (or rewarding) someone for something that they have no control over. I'd consider that not just, and not the type of thing a progressive society should do.

Think it's OK to give me higher rates because I'm a man, and thus more likely to die younger of a heart attack or stroke? How about if we take that up a notch and deny someone insurance entirely because genetically they have a predisposition to cancer? Same idea, different levels.

So, it's not mad at all. A decent society should be averaging out its costs, and letting the better off help the worse off.

Now, on the other hand, different rates for choices that people make are totally OK to me. Want to charge me higher rates because I eat too much red meat? Fine. And give a discount to that vegetarian next door? No problem. I hope I'll also get a discount for my regular trips to the gym while the smoker across the street is dinged.

[andrewducker]

In _my_ perfect society, the government would provide a basic level of protection/insurance, and then if you wanted more you could go to private lenders, who would provide it at whatever cost they felt like.

But I agree, people shouldn't be denied basic rights because of something that wasn't their fault.

[cassielsander.livejournal.com]

I can't make up my mind, which I suppose makes it a good quiz. The whole insurance industry makes me uncomfortable. I do like the idea of a basic government safety net for the relativley unavoidable hazards.

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

Our society is sort of built on pretending that people are equal. We all know they aren't, but that is no comfort if you are paying through the nose and the guy next door is not. Being told you are a bad statistic is unlikely to help either.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

that is just STUPID!