Yes, it is true, but there is a trick. Women live longer than men and inherit from them. So there are a lot of rich old ladies who tend to balance out the huge number of single moms. The average hides a large variation.
Rich old ladies who are past needing birth control.
[quote]
[li]Even though the women covered by Medicare are older than the men, Medicare distributes 12 percent more of its payments per beneficiary per year to men.[/li][/quote]
12% seems pretty reasonable, given that health care costs are heavily weighted towards the last year of life and women live longer than men.
To illustrate, suppose a typical man lives to age 75, and medicaid spends $2000 per year on him from ages 65 to 74 and then $10,000.00 on him in his last year of life. In that case, the average expenditure is $2,800 per year.
By contrast, if a woman lives to age 80, and medicare spends $2000 per year from ages 65 to 79, and $10,000.00 in her last year of life, then the total expenditure is $38,000.00. That’s $2533.00 per year.
So in my illustration, Medicare is spending about 11% more per year on the man than the woman. But it doesn’t really mean anything. In fact, the total expenditure is 30% or 40% higher for the woman than for the man. This makes sense because women live longer.
It looks as though your statistic was carefully chosen to make an equitable system appear discriminatory.
My statistic was from an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, which gave a long list of examples of why health care was better suited to serve men’s needs than women. I’d link the article but no one here is going to be able to read it unless you can access it through a college database, or just happen to have a paid subscription to the NEJM.
I chose some points I felt would give an understanding of why that argument is well-founded. I doubt that the NEJM has any reason to spin the information- they’re a peer-reviewed scholarly research journal, and they sort of frown on that sort of thing.
I believe that NEJM articles are submitted by outside authors.
Anyway, you may not want to believe that your statistics have been spinned, but spinned they are.
Did the article compare total medicare expenditures per person? If not, then why not?
Do you accept that expenditure per year is a meaningless comparison given the difference in life expectancies?
Are you saying that everything in the NEJM is unquestionably true and unbiased? That the NEJM never ever prints advocacy pieces?
Right on yahwc, the realities are much more complicated than a few statistics. Statistics are easy to spin. I know my dad died of cancer three years ago. the costs where enormous. My mom is still going, and her medical expenses for the last three years are not cheap. And there is still going to be that big surge at the end. Does anyone have any real credible data as to which sex, on an actuarial basis costs more for health care? I have no doubt the insurance companies do, but that is “proprietary” information and top secret. I know in my family the medical costs of my wife exceed that of both sons and myself combined. And she is not a whiner, she has legitimate healthcare needs. I do not know if this is the norm or an abberation, and would love to get some solid data on it to either further the arguement women are more expensive in health care, or to quash the argument completely.
In a completely unrelated thought. I propose the following solution to the Viagra vs birth control issue. Cover neither. You need viagra pay for it, or stop having sex. Birth control pills, pay for it or stop having sex. Work it out with your partner. share the cost. I should not have to share the cost of your sex life. Of course consideration should be taken for those cases where the same meds normally prescribed for BC are used for other reasons, such as hormone imbalances or whatever.
Please let me add I loved my dad, and love my mom and will go to any expense, I was speaking in a purely financial context, completley ruling out emotion.
I have read more journal articles on gender and health care than I ever care to do again, yet the information I was looking for was found through a freakin’ google search.
From Planned Parenthood.
So covering contraception is cheaper because it prevents unintended pregnancies, yet many insurers still do not cover it. If it saves them money, why aren’t they? I find it hard to believe that this does not constitute gender discrimination. And, as shown above, I’m not the only one who thinks so.
I wonder if Pharmacia and Upjohn stand to gain should health insurers be required to pay for oral contraception.
They obviously hate money. :rolleyes:
Not all health care plans are the same. Some cover birth control, others do not. Some are more expensive to have but cheaper to use. Some cover this, others cover that. There’s no one body out there deciding to screw whoever, it’s a bunch of folks using their own formulas to try and pridict which will cost the least while receiving the most. These predictions, much like all things human, are not certanties. Nor are they the best for all people. So the employer has to try and guess which is the best for their employees as a whole and the employee has to decide which option is best for them. As long as our society decides it wants somebody else to pick up part of the tab it’ll never be what everyone wants it to be.
Are we still discussing the OP, or have we sidetracked to that one off-the-wall anecdote? I was referring to the linked articles, and the claim that charging men and women the same amount is discriminatory because women visit the doctor more. I think that is a faulty argument.
It’s my belief that almost all insurance plans charge men and women the same amount. It that’s being contested, then we need to be clear what we’re debating.
In addition, I could counter the argument that men don’t visit the doctor enough by arguing that women visit the doctor too much, and are reaping more benefits than men. If it’s a co-pay system, a doctor’s visit might cost the patient 1/10th or less than the actual cost of that service. So let’s say, just as a guess, that a doctor is paid $100 for each appointment, but the co-pay is $10. Each doctor’s visit by a woman that is above the number of doctor’s visits by a man in effect costs the man $90. But that doesn’t constitute discrimination.
I apologize for posting so much, but here’s the goods.
So women cost more to cover because of longer life expectancy and reproductive health services. OK, no big deal, we have to pay a little more. But why would an insurance company like the one referenced earlier charge men $35 a month and women $92 a month, if women only spend 1/3 more in their lifetimes on health care? Shouldn’t it be closer to $50 a month for women? And we’re talking about a lot of health plans that don’t even contraception (this one didn’t), which saves money in the long run preventing unwanted pregnancies.
So women are paying higher premiums AND more money out of pocket, disproportionately to how much they cost to insure, simply because they’re women.* How is that not discriminatory?
And as for the evil male insurance cabal, considering that health insurance companies weren’t required to cover pregnancy until 1978, and mammograms and Pap smears until the 90s, I really don’t find it that hard to believe.
*Recall my previous posts where I showed that women pay 68% more on health care (much of it out of pocket expenses because of insurance companies that don’t cover contraception). Compare that to women’s lifetime healthcare costs being 34% more than men. And then explain to me why the first figure is double the second.
Exactly. My insurance doesn’t cover Rogaine, but it does cover The Pill. Would I argue that it’s discriminating against men? No, that would be absurd.
It’s absurd because Rogaine isn’t medically necessary. There are no medical benefits whatsoever. The pill, on the other hand, has many medical benefits.
Not always.
Here’s another quote from your reference:
Presumably a lot of the health care expenses during senior years are picked up by medicare. And yet men and women pay the same rate for social security taxes.
By your standard, isn’t that clearly discriminatory?
You would have to know the particulars of the health care plan. For example, it’s mathematically possible that the total expenditures for women are 30 per cent higher, but the total expenditures for women that exceed the deductible are 300% higher.
Here’s another illustration for you:
Suppose that a man has $1100 in medical expenses in a typical year in which he is insured by the plan and that the deductible is $1000. That means he pays $1000 out of pocket, and recieves $100 in payouts from the insurance company.
The corresponding woman has medical expenses that are 30% higher than the man’s. That means her medical expenses are $1430. So she pays $1000 out of pocket and receives $430 in payouts.
That means the woman’s payouts are more than 4 times the man’s, even though her expenses are only 30% higher.
From an actuarial perspective, the insurance company would be justified in charging her premiums that are 4 times that of a man.
As a “peer reviewed” journal, the NEJM does, indeed, publish articles submitted by outside authors. It’s not written by gnomes sitting in an attick up there in Boston.
Check out your nearest medical/scientific library. Or a good public one. Look for “Men, Women, and Health Insurance” Volume 336:218-221.
If you want to do some research on your own, there are plenty of data out there.
Er, yes? IME they’re about fifty cents each. You certainly can pay more if you go for the Ultra Ribbed Lubricated Warming Glow-in-the-Dark whateverthehell variety, but an average condom is not expensive. Plus, a lot of women’s health centers, such as Planned Parenthood, sell them for even cheaper or just give them away.
This I didn’t know. But a quick look around the web tells me that they’re about twenty bucks. Again, if you want to use that method and cost is an issue, go to Planned Parenthood. They won’t charge you a hundred bucks for twenty seconds with a nurse.
No, condoms probably not free, but seriously, if you can’t afford fifty cents, maybe you should just cut the risk all together and not have sex. But none of these are more expensive than the BC pill.
No, per your cite, 40% of the difference is due to life expectancy. 60%, most of it, is not.
For the company in question, it does NOT save money in the long run, or at least that’s what their actuaries have concluded. Just because your insurance doesn’t cover birth control doesn’t mean you aren’t buying it. In reality, the insurer is not faced with a choice of paying either for birth control or a pregnancy. I’m speculating, but it does not at all seem far-fetched to me that the average woman who can pay for health insurance also has the wherewithal to pay for birth control–and she in all likelihood does, if forced to. I’m not commenting on whether or not this is fair, only on the notion that an insurer is throwing money away by NOT paying for birth control. It could well be a benefit that ONLY costs them money, based on their pricing models, based on the demographics of the subset of the population it insures.
So, ask yourself this question: If an insurer could charge a man $90 a month, why wouldn’t they? What would possibly stop them? Do you really think it’s some good ol’ boy executive concluding, “Come on, he doesn’t have a vagina. Give the guy a break, charge him less!” Do you really think an insurer would leave that money on the table?
Or could it possibly be, just maybe, that the only way to profitably provide the service they offer is to charge what they do? Common sense says so. The incredulity expressed in this thread is testament to it. Why in the world would an insurer knowingly do something unprofitable? It wouldn’t!
I don’t think a health insurer should have to cover ANYTHING they don’t want to. And none of us should be forced to purchase their product. That’s how it should work.
The pill isn’t medically necessary when prescribed for birth control, any more than condoms are medically necessary. But Viagra is medically necessary. Sexual function is part of the human body. To say a man doesn’t need to be able to get an erection is absurd - a normal male is able to get an erection. So I could use your “medically necessary” argument to counter the complaint that some insurers cover Viagra and not The Pill. Yet women are bitterly arguing against such a policy. And that’s my point - all these ‘apples and oranges’ arguments do not hold water.
I wonder if health insurers cover the pill if prescribed for cramps or whatever.
Well if women can’t afford 30 bucks a month for birth control pills, maybe they should do the same.