Muckety mover - Health insurance industry acknowledges de facto discrimination

Health insurance companies have offered to stop charging women higher premiums.

Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group, made that offer Wednesday while testifying before the Senate Finance Committee.

It was the latest concession by an industry trying to fend off creation of a government insurance plan that would compete with it for middle-class workers and their families.

As part of that effort, insurers had already agreed to accept all customers, regardless of illness or disability, if every American were required to have coverage. Last month, they also offered to stop charging higher premiums to the sick.

But such concessions are likely to have a boomerang effect. Agreeing to end de-facto discrimination against women and sick people, after all, underscores the shortcomings of a healthcare industry organized around the profit motive.

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