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If you have a higher chance of getting a disease, why wouldn't life insurance be more expensive? Life insurance will also be cheaper if you don't have that cha

If you have a higher chance of getting a disease, why wouldn't life insurance be more expensive? Life insurance will also be cheaper if you don't have that chance. The point of insurance is to spread random risk around. Nobody complains that young women have cheaper car insurance than young men, or that young people have more expensive car insurance than older people, but cheaper health insurance. Young men are more likely to have car accidents, but less likely to have cancer. The point of insurance is not wealth redistribution or the spreading of systemic risk, but the spreading of random risk. (I mean this in the sense of 'systemic error' vs 'random error' that you will remember from high school physics.)

chmod775 3y ago
This directly leads to discrimination against disabled people among other groups. For instance wheelchair bound people have a much lower average live expectancy. The lives of people who are (born) disabled or have some debilitating genetic disease don't need society to make their lives even harder. > If you have a higher chance of getting a disease, why wouldn't life insurance be more expensive? The answer to that is: Not spreading such risks evenly among everyone is morally reprehensible. Imagine your reward for living in constant pain and having a higher chance of dying early is society kicking you in the balls for the crime of being born like that.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  My car insurance company knows I have a Y-chromosome and charges me extra for it. Seems to be a universal practice at least in the US.
  - StanislavPetrov 3y ago
    A lot of discriminatory practices exist in the US. We should strive to eliminate them, not expand them.
    - memefrog 3y ago
      No, we should not 'strive to eliminate' them. The entire point of insurance is that it is based on risk assessments that are as accurate as possible, using all the information that is available. It is not a wealth redistribution mechanism, but a randomness redistribution system. If you know that you have an illness, and don't tell your insurance company, then you're a fraudster. If you know you have a genetic predisposition to illness, that's no different. Discrimination is not inherently a bad thing. There are specific lists of special reasons, and discrimination on those bases is considered bad and has widely been made unlawful. Usually, insurance is an exception! And it should be. I don't see why men should subsidise the health insurance of women or why women should subsidise the car insurance of men. I don't see why the young should subsidise the health insurance of the old. That's not the point of insurance.
      - ghusbands 3y ago
        You're pushing a very limited view of insurance, here. There are plenty of cases in the world where insurance is a "randomness redistribution system" across a whole population, where the lottery of genetics is also considered part of that randomness, avoiding building in discrimination.
        memefrog 3y ago
        Do you have any examples?
        ghusbands 3y ago
        Health insurance in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland, among others, cannot charge more for pre-existing conditions. If you include state-provided care, then health care in basically every EU country, as a core principle of the EU is that everyone has the right to timely access to affordable, preventive, and curative health care of good quality. Also, it's law in many countries that you cannot discriminate against people on the basis of protected characteristics, no matter the mechanism or how unfair it may seem to those with privilege.
- memefrog 3y ago
  > This directly leads to discrimination against disabled people among other groups. Yes, of course if someone has a disability that puts them at a higher risk of some event, and they want to insure themselves against that event, they'd pay higher insurance premiums. That's like, the entire point of insurance. If you live in an area that is prone to flooding, then you either can't insure yourself against flood damage or the insurance premiums are a lot more expensive than someone living in a desert. If you smoke, your health insurance and life insurance premiums are higher. If you have type 1 diabetes, you will probably struggle to get any meaningful amount of life insurance. What alternative are you proposing? That anyone purchasing insurance will automatically be expected to subsidise the insurance premiums of people that are at higher risk? That's not what insurance is for. If you want to redistribute wealth from people without disabilities to people with disabilities, then you can do that using taxes. But not by pretending there's anything wrong with honest risk assessment in insurance. >The answer to that is: Not spreading such risks evenly among everyone is morally reprehensible. Imagine your reward for living in constant pain and having a higher chance of dying early is society kicking you in the balls for the crime of being born like that. Nobody is being 'kicked in the balls'. Stop using such emotionally manipulative tactics and such charged language. Insurance is about spreading random risk. It is not for spreading systemic risk. I don't think you understand the purpose of insurance at all.
  - clnq 3y ago
    > If you have type 1 diabetes, you will probably struggle to get any meaningful amount of life insurance. This is not true, and sadly it's a harmful myth in the T1D community. More info - https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetic-life-insurance.html https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetic-life-insurance.html.
DoughnutHole 3y ago
There are plenty of systemic factors that we have banned from being considered in things like insurance. Black men have a lower life expectancy and higher chances of certain illnesses or of being the victim of a violent crime than white men. If you put a race question on your life insurance form and incorporate that into your pricing you’ll be looking at a a brutal lawsuit. Actuarial math is not some moral law that we are beholden to as a society. There are discriminations that we decide are unjust and make society worse even if they spread the costs of insurance more accurately.
- memefrog 3y ago
  I certainly hope race is factored into insurance! Sex is. Why wouldn't race be? Geographical location is, and that is largely a proxy for race. It is not "unjust" to make more accurate predictions using the data you have available. It is fundamentally incapable of being unjust. Injustice comes from making wrong decisions, not from making right decisions. You seem like the type of person that would declare statistics racist because it reveals facts you don't want to hear.
  - DoughnutHole 3y ago
    This is such a juvenile understanding of racism. Justice is not derived from statistics. Espousing statistics does not justify racial discrimination. We did not ban racial discrimination because we engaged with statistical arguments for racism and decided they were unfounded. A decision can be supported statistically (in some contrived way “right”) and be ethically wrong. We undid legal racial discrimination because it’s morally repugnant.
    - memefrog 3y ago
      >We did not ban racial discrimination because we engaged with statistical arguments for racism and decided they were unfounded. That is exactly what we did. Legally entrenched racial discriminatiom was widely supported pretty much exactly up until science refuted scientific racism. The whole argument against racism is that race doesn't matter, it is just a social construct, "race" is meaningless because there is more variability with races than between them, etc. That has always been a key argument against racism. >We undid legal racial discrimination because it’s morally repugnant. It is morally repugnant because it is incorrect. It would not be morally repugnant to discriminate racially if it wasn't baseless, just as it isn't morally repugnant to discriminate in any situation where it is justifiable. For example nobody has a problem with not hiring a black man to play a white female character in a film. Nobody has a problem with having publicly funded breast cancer screening programs that are only available for women, even though in very rare cases males can get breast cancer. Racism is morally repugnant when you make decisions based on race. It is obviously not morally repugnant if you are making decisions based on something else, and that happens to correlate with race. There is quite obviously nothing wrong with basing insurance premiums on all available information about someone, including genetic information. Would you say it is morally repugnant to charge higher premiums to white people for skin cancer health insurance cover? Come on! Use your brain, man.
Turing_Machine 3y ago
> Nobody complains that young women have cheaper car insurance than young men, or that young people have more expensive car insurance than older people, but cheaper health insurance. On the contrary. People complain about stuff like this all the time. An example: for whatever reason (genetic factors, stress, lifestyle factors) black people are much more likely to have high blood pressure than white people. That's a fact. What do you suppose would happen if insurance companies tried to charge black people more money, or simply refused to cover them for conditions related to high blood pressure?
- memefrog 3y ago
  >On the contrary. People complain about stuff like this all the time. Yes. Ignorant people do. They lose the argument because they can't justify their position. >What do you suppose would happen if insurance companies tried to charge black people more money, or simply refused to cover them for conditions related to high blood pressure? Performative outrage from the insanely woke mainstream media, because racial issues drive ratings like nothing else. Insurance companies wouldn't refuse to cover them for those conditions because it isn't good business sense, both for the above reason and because the rational thing is to charge a slightly higher premium. Why should white people getting insurance subsidise the insurance of unhealthy people that make bad lifestyle choices just because those people happen to be black, but not otherwise?
  - timschmidt 3y ago
    > Insurance companies wouldn't refuse to cover them for those conditions because it isn't good business sense See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining "While the best-known examples involve denial of credit and insurance, also sometimes attributed to redlining in many instances are denial of healthcare and the development of food deserts in minority neighborhoods."
    - memefrog 3y ago
      I have no idea what dumb woke gotcha this is meant to be

chmod775 3y ago

This directly leads to discrimination against disabled people among other groups. For instance wheelchair bound people have a much lower average live expectancy. The lives of people who are (born) disabled or have some debilitating genetic disease don't need society to make their lives even harder. > If you have a higher chance of getting a disease, why wouldn't life insurance be more expensive? The answer to that is: Not spreading such risks evenly among everyone is morally reprehensible. Imagine your reward for living in constant pain and having a higher chance of dying early is society kicking you in the balls for the crime of being born like that.

wlesieutre 3y ago
My car insurance company knows I have a Y-chromosome and charges me extra for it. Seems to be a universal practice at least in the US.
- StanislavPetrov 3y ago
  A lot of discriminatory practices exist in the US. We should strive to eliminate them, not expand them.
  - memefrog 3y ago
    No, we should not 'strive to eliminate' them. The entire point of insurance is that it is based on risk assessments that are as accurate as possible, using all the information that is available. It is not a wealth redistribution mechanism, but a randomness redistribution system. If you know that you have an illness, and don't tell your insurance company, then you're a fraudster. If you know you have a genetic predisposition to illness, that's no different. Discrimination is not inherently a bad thing. There are specific lists of special reasons, and discrimination on those bases is considered bad and has widely been made unlawful. Usually, insurance is an exception! And it should be. I don't see why men should subsidise the health insurance of women or why women should subsidise the car insurance of men. I don't see why the young should subsidise the health insurance of the old. That's not the point of insurance.
    - ghusbands 3y ago
      You're pushing a very limited view of insurance, here. There are plenty of cases in the world where insurance is a "randomness redistribution system" across a whole population, where the lottery of genetics is also considered part of that randomness, avoiding building in discrimination.
      - memefrog 3y ago
        Do you have any examples?
        ghusbands 3y ago
        Health insurance in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland, among others, cannot charge more for pre-existing conditions. If you include state-provided care, then health care in basically every EU country, as a core principle of the EU is that everyone has the right to timely access to affordable, preventive, and curative health care of good quality. Also, it's law in many countries that you cannot discriminate against people on the basis of protected characteristics, no matter the mechanism or how unfair it may seem to those with privilege.
memefrog 3y ago
> This directly leads to discrimination against disabled people among other groups. Yes, of course if someone has a disability that puts them at a higher risk of some event, and they want to insure themselves against that event, they'd pay higher insurance premiums. That's like, the entire point of insurance. If you live in an area that is prone to flooding, then you either can't insure yourself against flood damage or the insurance premiums are a lot more expensive than someone living in a desert. If you smoke, your health insurance and life insurance premiums are higher. If you have type 1 diabetes, you will probably struggle to get any meaningful amount of life insurance. What alternative are you proposing? That anyone purchasing insurance will automatically be expected to subsidise the insurance premiums of people that are at higher risk? That's not what insurance is for. If you want to redistribute wealth from people without disabilities to people with disabilities, then you can do that using taxes. But not by pretending there's anything wrong with honest risk assessment in insurance. >The answer to that is: Not spreading such risks evenly among everyone is morally reprehensible. Imagine your reward for living in constant pain and having a higher chance of dying early is society kicking you in the balls for the crime of being born like that. Nobody is being 'kicked in the balls'. Stop using such emotionally manipulative tactics and such charged language. Insurance is about spreading random risk. It is not for spreading systemic risk. I don't think you understand the purpose of insurance at all.
- clnq 3y ago
  > If you have type 1 diabetes, you will probably struggle to get any meaningful amount of life insurance. This is not true, and sadly it's a harmful myth in the T1D community. More info - https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetic-life-insurance.html https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetic-life-insurance.html.

DoughnutHole 3y ago

There are plenty of systemic factors that we have banned from being considered in things like insurance. Black men have a lower life expectancy and higher chances of certain illnesses or of being the victim of a violent crime than white men. If you put a race question on your life insurance form and incorporate that into your pricing you’ll be looking at a a brutal lawsuit. Actuarial math is not some moral law that we are beholden to as a society. There are discriminations that we decide are unjust and make society worse even if they spread the costs of insurance more accurately.

memefrog 3y ago
I certainly hope race is factored into insurance! Sex is. Why wouldn't race be? Geographical location is, and that is largely a proxy for race. It is not "unjust" to make more accurate predictions using the data you have available. It is fundamentally incapable of being unjust. Injustice comes from making wrong decisions, not from making right decisions. You seem like the type of person that would declare statistics racist because it reveals facts you don't want to hear.
- DoughnutHole 3y ago
  This is such a juvenile understanding of racism. Justice is not derived from statistics. Espousing statistics does not justify racial discrimination. We did not ban racial discrimination because we engaged with statistical arguments for racism and decided they were unfounded. A decision can be supported statistically (in some contrived way “right”) and be ethically wrong. We undid legal racial discrimination because it’s morally repugnant.
  - memefrog 3y ago
    >We did not ban racial discrimination because we engaged with statistical arguments for racism and decided they were unfounded. That is exactly what we did. Legally entrenched racial discriminatiom was widely supported pretty much exactly up until science refuted scientific racism. The whole argument against racism is that race doesn't matter, it is just a social construct, "race" is meaningless because there is more variability with races than between them, etc. That has always been a key argument against racism. >We undid legal racial discrimination because it’s morally repugnant. It is morally repugnant because it is incorrect. It would not be morally repugnant to discriminate racially if it wasn't baseless, just as it isn't morally repugnant to discriminate in any situation where it is justifiable. For example nobody has a problem with not hiring a black man to play a white female character in a film. Nobody has a problem with having publicly funded breast cancer screening programs that are only available for women, even though in very rare cases males can get breast cancer. Racism is morally repugnant when you make decisions based on race. It is obviously not morally repugnant if you are making decisions based on something else, and that happens to correlate with race. There is quite obviously nothing wrong with basing insurance premiums on all available information about someone, including genetic information. Would you say it is morally repugnant to charge higher premiums to white people for skin cancer health insurance cover? Come on! Use your brain, man.

Turing_Machine 3y ago

> Nobody complains that young women have cheaper car insurance than young men, or that young people have more expensive car insurance than older people, but cheaper health insurance. On the contrary. People complain about stuff like this all the time. An example: for whatever reason (genetic factors, stress, lifestyle factors) black people are much more likely to have high blood pressure than white people. That's a fact. What do you suppose would happen if insurance companies tried to charge black people more money, or simply refused to cover them for conditions related to high blood pressure?

memefrog 3y ago
>On the contrary. People complain about stuff like this all the time. Yes. Ignorant people do. They lose the argument because they can't justify their position. >What do you suppose would happen if insurance companies tried to charge black people more money, or simply refused to cover them for conditions related to high blood pressure? Performative outrage from the insanely woke mainstream media, because racial issues drive ratings like nothing else. Insurance companies wouldn't refuse to cover them for those conditions because it isn't good business sense, both for the above reason and because the rational thing is to charge a slightly higher premium. Why should white people getting insurance subsidise the insurance of unhealthy people that make bad lifestyle choices just because those people happen to be black, but not otherwise?
- timschmidt 3y ago
  > Insurance companies wouldn't refuse to cover them for those conditions because it isn't good business sense See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining "While the best-known examples involve denial of credit and insurance, also sometimes attributed to redlining in many instances are denial of healthcare and the development of food deserts in minority neighborhoods."
  - memefrog 3y ago
    I have no idea what dumb woke gotcha this is meant to be