As a society you can make it illegal to discriminate on factors that a person has no control over.
I wonder why it is that car insurance charges higher rates to young males(who on average cost more than young females), but medical insurance as far as I can tell is equally priced for young men and young women, even though young women generally have higher health care costs than young men(primarily through childbirth and greater use of health services).
I don't want to be cynical but I imagine if a health care company in the US or Canada actually did start charging more for some class of young women vs young men, it would make international news and lead to new anti-discrimination laws for health insurance
Catch up Canada!
They also use first name to discriminate. Put in "Wayne", and the quotes are much higher than "Sarah".
A “lucky” individual has reduced premiums, while an “unlucky” individual has increased premiums, and neither has any control over it! Comparatively, someone benefits and someone suffers (both are undeserved).
After thinking about it, I want to hear from someone who thinks the opposite to me - that it is perfectly fair for someone to pay more and, thus, someone else to pay less, due to a factor that neither has any choice about.
However, for this system to work, each person does need to pay in approximately enough to cover the risk they create to the policy. So yes, more risky people do need to pay more, because they are creating more costs to the policy.
Basically, insurance isn't free healthcare, and we shouldn't be treating it that way.
Think about it, though - what is really being measured? Maybe there's a small subset of super high-risk male drivers who the rest of us are subsidizing. If they were to base my insurance rates on measurable individual characteristics, that would be much less suspect IMO.
By comparison, the car insurance test of gender was straightforward (just look at the letter on the document!). I would hesitate to apply my original statement to such a fuzzy situation.