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Women pay more
It's tax time! Right about now, you might be patting yourself on the back for all taxes you saved with your Health Savings Account (HSA). Since Bush's tax rules link HSAs to high-deductible health insurance plans -- ones with about a $2,000 deductible -- the Bush administration can take a good deal of credit for the spread of those high-deductible plans.
Only, as it turns out, women pay more. A Harvard Med School study found that average medical costs for both women and men came in under the $2,000 deductible (meaning insurance covered $0 of their costs) but women had more expensive health needs and so paid $1,000 more than men. Or, as the lead researcher put it:
"High-deductible plans punish women for having breasts and uteruses and having babies," said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, the study's lead author. "When an employer switches all his employees into a consumer-driven health plan, it's the same as giving all the women a $1,000 pay cut, on average, because women on average have $1,000 more in health costs than men."
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And this is a surprise to whom? This is mostly babies.
But does this mean that when calculating whether women are paid the same as men in census studies and the such, their indirect earnings via health insurance should be valued more highly? Your assertion cuts both ways.
April 9, 2007 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
It only goes to show that you know little to nothing, there are things more important then what you see on the surface of women. Your only looking at what is seen as a netrual side view, if you have a mutliple platform for what you'd like to see in a person then you might have something of a voice.
April 9, 2007 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have read your comment maybe 5 times. So far I cannot make any sense out of it at all.
Here is what I am saying:
#1. I used to determine the cost of Medicaid for various populations. I can assure you that the main reason for this cost differential is the cost of birth. It may not be 100%, but it is the great part of it.
#2. If one is going to assert that women lose more when they lose health insurance, then by implication, the health insurance is more valuable to them. This MIGHT imply that the assertion that they are not paid as their parallel males is miscalculated. It is a sound question. If taking it away is a bigger cost, then before it was taken away, it was MORE.
April 9, 2007 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not just babies. It's annual smear tests, mammograms, and birth control too.
I live in the UK now and I bless the NHS daily despite its many foibles. In the States, without health insurance, I would have paid easily $1,000 for every visit I made the gynocologist, including office fees and tests. (Full disclosure - this was in Westchester Co, NY. Probably would have been cheaper elsewhere, but still.) My co-pay for birth control was $35 per month, but of course if I didn't have health insurance I'd have been paying considerably more. If I was over 40, meanwhile, I'd imagine you could double the office fees for an annual trip to the radiologist for a mammogram.
That's just annual maintenance costs for a medically responsible woman, and it doesn't take into account any lost wages for time spent away from work, transport costs, or childcare. Nor, of course, does it cover any actual illnesses! Just goes to show you don't have to breed every year to rack up $2,000 in medical expenses very, very quickly.
April 10, 2007 5:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
This doesen't make sense. High deductibles punish those who purchase a lot of healthcare? Doesen't high deductibles punish people who don't purchase a lot of health care make more sense? Or deductibles in general punish those who's healthcare purchases don't exceed the deductible?
I piss on "consumer driven" healthcare in general, but don't think there's an issue here.
April 10, 2007 12:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
actually most good insurance plans will pay for wellness exams 100% after co-pay, because insurance companies have worked the #'s and understand they reduce the risk of disease.
August 2, 2007 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink