The Hartford Courant
April 22, 2004
ConnectiCare Joining Gender Trend
By Diane Levick
ConnectiCare plans to start charging thousands of women higher health insurance rates than men – a difference ranging from 3 to 40 percent – in an effort to even up the score with competitors.
Anthem Blue Cross and UnitedHealth Group already use gender rates for small employers here, and it is not known yet whether other managed care companies will follow suit.
The impact of gender rates alone on a small employer depends on the make-up of the workforce. An employer with a predominantly female workforce could end up paying more than under the old system. A business with mostly male workers who are young to middle-aged would pay less than if unisex rates
were applied.
… ConnectiCare and other insurers who don’t gender-rate could attract a disproportionate share of employers with more women than men – the higher cost groups.
Employers, though, could still buy ConnectiCare insurance with unisex rates through the Connecticut Business and Industry Association’s Health Connections program (CBIA).
ConnectiCare’s decision is “marketing genius” because it still allows access to its unisex rates through CBIA, said Bob Feen, president of The Benefits Group Inc. in Cheshire, which sells health insurance and other employee benefits.
With the choice of accessing ConnectiCare directly or through CBIA, small employers and their benefits brokers “can pick which model works best for them,” Feen said.
http://www.ctnow.com/business/hc-connecticare0422.artapr22,0,6833223.story
Comment: The perversity of allowing decisions on health care financing to be made in the marketplace by the private insurance industry could not be better exemplified than by this decision that basically dictates that being born female is a preexisting disorder!
Market decisions by private insurance interests can never lead to an equitable, affordable, universal system of funding care. We desperately need to establish our own public system of social insurance.