Hacker News Reader

Comment by martincmartin | Hacker News Reader

Gender is determined genetically, and men and woman have different life expectancies. Does this mean you can't charge men and women different rates (all else being equal)?

View on HN

The US bill explicitly excludes gender: "`(C) EXCLUSIONS- The term `genetic information' shall not include information about the sex or age of any individual."

The european court of justice has already ruled that price discrimination based on gender for insurance premiums is sex discrimination and therefore in violation of fundamental human rights.

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-11-123_en.htm?loca...

Sex is determined genetically; Gender is determined socially and psychologically.

That is an ideological position, not a statement of fact.

The claim that ideology is separate from fact is an ideological position, so I don't think you are saying much. Do you care to make a claim about why you feel its acceptable to confuse sex and gender?

You can. Insurance spreads risk across population pools. You have to carve out those pools somehow, so you use broad variables like age and gender. The problem is genetic information has potential to make the pools too small.

And from a payer perspective, it's problematic if a sizable population secretly learns that they are at meaningfully greater risk of health problems. Those individuals could then adversely select against the payers by buying Cadillac healthcare plans.

You don't have to carve out those pools at all. Insurance is workable if everyone is lumped into a single huge pool. The trouble is that a company which is able to break their clientele into smaller pools will outcompete those who aren't, so you get a bit of a race to the bottom.

Indeed. Singe Payer + Universal Coverage = FTW.

Since these companies don't determine your sex by asking you to submit a DNA sample and then surmising your sex via genetic information, but rather by asking you to indicate 'M' or 'F' on a form, genetic protections would be unlikely to be pertinent in the vast majority of cases. At least, that's my nonlawyer layperson read of things.

The Affordable Care Act prohibits charging based on gender. This provision kicks in on January 1, 2014.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Afforda...

Tangentially related, I've been wondering if that could affect current gender discrepancies in the entrepreneurial scene (prospect of paying 200-300% more for private health insurance than male counterparts makes it even harder to leave your day job). More female startup founders in 2014, maybe?

That would be the same as charging women different for being more prone to car accidents.

Actually car insurance premiums do vary based on gender, at least under a certain age (teenage boys being the most expensive to insure).

It's very common that young male drivers (by virtue of being grossly overrepresented in accident statistics) have very high premiums.

As far as I know, women in the UK used to pay less for car insurance because they are less accident prone. I don't know if this has changed because of sex discrimination laws. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12600284

What? No. Gender isn't determined genetically. It's a psychological phenomenon. Also, sex can't even reliably be determined by chromosomes. There are things like Klinefelter syndrome, or XX male syndrome (exactly like it sounds).

Sex can easily be detected from the phenotype in most cases.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com