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On November 24 2010 03:48 TLOBrian wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2010 03:31 JWD wrote:Sure this is discrimination, but so what? OP, are you really suggesting that insurance companies not be able to discriminate based on statistics? Do you know how much more expensive that would make everyone's insurance rates? Not to mention intensifying adverse selection problems, which could be crippling for insurance in general. And all for what? So that you can feel better about being a man? This baffles me. So, you're saying than an asian female should get higher insurance rates than a white female? Because we ALL know how bad the asians drive. /sarcasm But really, if the rates for one RACIAL GROUP, or an INCOME BRACKET get into more crashes, you WANT asians/latinos to pay more? You want low income families to pay more? You want people that are slightly overweight to pay more? You want people that have a family history of mental illness to pay more? You want people that have a job that requires long drives to pay more? You want people that are blue eyed to pay more? You want people that have red hair to pay more? You want people that are tanned to pay more? You want people that have a green house to pay more? It's ridiculous.
To put it simply, statistics don't lie. If you use proper math (which insurance companies do, they hire plenty of actuaries), then you can get solid confidence intervals with even a few thousand tests. With the sheer size of the data they have, if something is NOT correllated to accidents, there will be something like a 99.999999% chance that their analysis shows that it is not correllated. As such, tanning, house colour, eye colour, etc will not enter any of their equations because they're not related to accident rates. If they can legally ask you for the information, then it's already being included in insurance rates. If the absurd examples you've given have not entered them so far, then they never will, because you don't need more data than the hundreds of millions of units they've already included.
Basically, if the stats that insurance companies have say something, it's probably true. If they found that they could use ethnicity to get reliable information, while removing the correllation ethnicity has with time spent driving, then it would be fine. Basically, if they found that black people get in to 35% more accidents than white people, that wouldn't be enough evidence, because it may be the case that people with under 20 years of driving experience get in to 100% more accidents and black people are 35% more likely to have under 20 years of driving experience. They already discriminate based on the time you've been driving in the country, so there would be no need to double-ding them like that, which is why it doesn't happen.
In short, learn statistics, then post here, because if you don't understand how actuarial models work, then you're going to keep thinking they'll spit out absurd results, which they don't.
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Simple answer. Different races are not physically different, genders are. Therefor sexism is allowed while racism is not in this case
There are many measurable differences between races, including aggression, IQ, inhibition, and physical strength, which provide equally strong evidence for differences as gender studies have.
Statistics does not justify racism and the lack of statistics is not the reason for tolerance.
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I've finally finished reading the last 22 pages, and the misconception seems to be that men are receiving more money from insurance payouts. Although not incorrect, we are using the wrong categorization for insurance payout.
The truth is that bad drivers, regardless of race/gender, are costing the company more. Fortunately for insurance companies, they can monitor this, through things such as previous accidents and traffic violations (both of which they do check for when deciding insurance rates).
The point is that men may cost more for companies, but bad drivers are far worse - why not increase the charges on them to offset the losses from making insurance rates gender-neutral?
I apologize in advance for the lack of clarity in the above post, bit too sleepy to make it more clear.
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Hi all,
I apologise if this has been stated elsewhere in the previous 22 pages, but I haven't had time to trawl through all the posts so far.
A very similar case to this has been presented to the one of the various European Courts (Human Rights I believe, please do not quote me on this, it might be one of the Justice-flavours) recently (about a month ago), by the European Attorney General.
Under the universal declaration of human rights it is illegal to discriminate on grounds of gender. In other words gender can not be used as the basis for any decision - this specifically includes insurance quotes. Regardless of any statistical bias towards (or against) male drivers, it is not a legitimate statistic to include when providing a quote for a service.
Various groups have made their concerns know about the possibility of the EU outlawing the use of gender in insurance discrimination, in particular because it would destroy all the 'female only' insurance companies which have recently popped up, however, current laws as written require that this be the case.
Personally I feel insurance companies should be free to charge whatever they want, they provide a service and in a free country they can charge anything they want for it. At the end of the day its them that goes bankrupt if they decide to charge unreasonable premiums. This is nothing to do with gender rights but more to do with freedom of a market mechanism.
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The OP is not being silly.
Paying for insurance based on statistics makes as much sense as paying for gas or food based on usage statistics instead of what you actually use.
It's the whole insurance system that is stupid, it punishes good drivers for being in the wrong demographic and rewards bad drivers by making others in their demographic pay for their mistakes.
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As a male nursing student/CNA I experience some form of male sexism. Because I'm male I have a hard time getting home health cases and people don't trust me to take care of their parents or their children even though I'm well qualified and have a much easier time doing difficult physical tasks.
Funny because most of the CNA's who I see steal from and abuse residents are females.
That's about the worst of it I get. I think it's natural or people to be more trusting of females but it does suck when it directly impedes my career choice. I can work around it though.
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On November 24 2010 05:53 Treemonkeys wrote:
The OP is not being silly.
Paying for insurance based on statistics makes as much sense as paying for gas or food based on usage statistics instead of what you actually use.
That depends on what you mean by "usage statistics". If you mean "how many people want to buy gas or food as opposed to how much gas or food there is to sell", that's exactly how gas and food are sold.
Insurance is a transaction where a company takes on a risk of loss in exchange for a payment. Proper assessment of the price of risk (through risk analysis) is the only way for an insurance company to survive.
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On November 24 2010 05:57 DoctorHelvetica wrote:
As a male nursing student/CNA I experience some form of male sexism. Because I'm male I have a hard time getting home health cases and people don't trust me to take care of their parents or their children even though I'm well qualified and have a much easier time doing difficult physical tasks.
Funny because most of the CNA's who I see steal from and abuse residents are females.
That's about the worst of it I get. I think it's natural or people to be more trusting of females but it does suck when it directly impedes my career choice. I can work around it though.
Heh, wish every man on the planet was put through this, what an exceptional difference it would make. Inspirational thought.
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What's the difference between discrimination of sex as the OP stated vs. discrimination of race in school admissions or affirmative action? Women are more likely to develop breast cancer and can get pregnant; does that mean that they should pay more for health insurance?
There are tons of cases which have words to say about the use of statistics to distribute costs and benefits based on gender, religion, age, race, etc. Anyone arguing that the OP doesn't understand actuarial science is really arguing a null point. I understand that the current models insurance companies use require companies do this sort of analysis to provide the benefits they do, but there are other means of distributing charges. It doesn't matter how the data is interpreted or fit together if the use of statistical analysis in this manner is deemed unethical in the first place.
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On November 24 2010 06:14 kidcrash89 wrote:
What's the difference between discrimination of sex as the OP stated vs. discrimination of race in school admissions or affirmative action?
There are tons of cases which have words to say about the use of statistics to distribute costs and benefits based on gender, religion, age, race, etc. Anyone arguing that the OP doesn't understand actuarial science is really arguing a null point. It doesn't matter how the data is interpreted or fit together if the use of statistical analysis in this manner is deemed unethical in the first place.
The alternative to the current method is to make car insurance public and bankrolled by the government. It eliminates any discrimination, but it's vastly more expensive.
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Basing insurance rates on anything more than personal previous accident history is unethical at best and in reality should probably be illegal. Does it make it hard to run insurance profitably? Probably, but that doesn't make that behavior ethical because you need it to make a profit. It is just another good argument for government run insurance that runs at cost and is fair and ethical to everyone.
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On November 24 2010 05:53 Treemonkeys wrote:
The OP is not being silly.
Paying for insurance based on statistics makes as much sense as paying for gas or food based on usage statistics instead of what you actually use.
It's the whole insurance system that is stupid, it punishes good drivers for being in the wrong demographic and rewards bad drivers by making others in their demographic pay for their mistakes.
"All you can eat" buffets are priced based on usage statistics... they figure how much the average person who eats at the buffet will eat and then set the buffet price based on that.
Insurance is like that... paying $100 in premiums allows you more than $100 recovered.
Otherwise it would be savings not insurance.
And saying auto insurance rates should be based on personal accident history is like saying life insurance rates should be based on the year that you died. Its missing the point.
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On November 24 2010 06:05 bonifaceviii wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2010 05:53 Treemonkeys wrote:
The OP is not being silly.
Paying for insurance based on statistics makes as much sense as paying for gas or food based on usage statistics instead of what you actually use. That depends on what you mean by "usage statistics". If you mean "how many people want to buy gas or food as opposed to how much gas or food there is to sell", that's exactly how gas and food are sold. Insurance is a transaction where a company takes on a risk of loss in exchange for a payment. Proper assessment of the price of risk (through risk analysis) is the only way for an insurance company to survive.
No, like "white 23 year old males eat X a month, so that will be your monthly food bill". That's how stupid it is.
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On November 24 2010 06:18 Krikkitone wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2010 05:53 Treemonkeys wrote:
The OP is not being silly.
Paying for insurance based on statistics makes as much sense as paying for gas or food based on usage statistics instead of what you actually use.
It's the whole insurance system that is stupid, it punishes good drivers for being in the wrong demographic and rewards bad drivers by making others in their demographic pay for their mistakes. "All you can eat" buffets are priced based on usage statistics... they figure how much the average person who eats at the buffet will eat and then set the buffet price based on that. Insurance is like that... paying $100 in premiums allows you more than $100 recovered. Otherwise it would be savings not insurance.
Do they charge more for buffets based on the demographic of the person buying the buffer? Nope. Does not apply.
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On November 24 2010 06:17 bonifaceviii wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2010 06:14 kidcrash89 wrote:
What's the difference between discrimination of sex as the OP stated vs. discrimination of race in school admissions or affirmative action?
There are tons of cases which have words to say about the use of statistics to distribute costs and benefits based on gender, religion, age, race, etc. Anyone arguing that the OP doesn't understand actuarial science is really arguing a null point. It doesn't matter how the data is interpreted or fit together if the use of statistical analysis in this manner is deemed unethical in the first place. The alternative to the current method is to make car insurance public and bankrolled by the government. It eliminates any discrimination, but it's vastly more expensive.
A few bills of legislation is all it requires in my eyes. No need for some central system. Don't get me wrong, the problem is a lot bigger than insurance policies. The supreme court has been very wishy-washy on such matters and really needs to get its story straight
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Sanya12364 Posts
On November 24 2010 06:18 Treemonkeys wrote:
No, like "white 23 year old males eat X a month, so that will be your monthly food bill". That's how stupid it is.
If you had an arrangement where your landlord paid for board, that would be exactly how your food bill gets determined. Most people find that it's better for people to purchase their own food directly.
But for insurance it's people trying to buy protection from exposure to risk. Normally you wouldn't have to buy protection from risk, but in this case the government mandates it.
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On November 24 2010 06:17 Struan wrote:
Basing insurance rates on anything more than personal previous accident history is unethical at best and in reality should probably be illegal. Does it make it hard to run insurance profitably? Probably, but that doesn't make that behavior ethical because you need it to make a profit. It is just another good argument for government run insurance that runs at cost and is fair and ethical to everyone.
How does forcing all tax payers to pay for it make it more ethical? It doesn't. It's just a different way of making everyone pay for the mistakes of a few.
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On November 24 2010 06:19 Treemonkeys wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2010 06:18 Krikkitone wrote:On November 24 2010 05:53 Treemonkeys wrote:
The OP is not being silly.
Paying for insurance based on statistics makes as much sense as paying for gas or food based on usage statistics instead of what you actually use.
It's the whole insurance system that is stupid, it punishes good drivers for being in the wrong demographic and rewards bad drivers by making others in their demographic pay for their mistakes. "All you can eat" buffets are priced based on usage statistics... they figure how much the average person who eats at the buffet will eat and then set the buffet price based on that. Insurance is like that... paying $100 in premiums allows you more than $100 recovered. Otherwise it would be savings not insurance. Do they charge more for buffets based on the demographic of the person buying the buffer? Nope. Does not apply.
I'm sure they have senior citizen discounts.
And if it was actually worth the time+expense, they would and should. (a restaurant stands to lose maybe 10$ worth of food from a single customer, not worth developing a complex model.... an insurance company can lose $100,000 from a single customer)
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On November 24 2010 06:22 Treemonkeys wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2010 06:17 Struan wrote:
Basing insurance rates on anything more than personal previous accident history is unethical at best and in reality should probably be illegal. Does it make it hard to run insurance profitably? Probably, but that doesn't make that behavior ethical because you need it to make a profit. It is just another good argument for government run insurance that runs at cost and is fair and ethical to everyone. How does forcing all tax payers to pay for it make it more ethical? It doesn't. It's just a different way of making everyone pay for the mistakes of a few.
I'm not sure what kind of constructive alternative you're proposing, then. Abolishing insurance?
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On November 24 2010 06:21 TanGeng wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2010 06:18 Treemonkeys wrote:
No, like "white 23 year old males eat X a month, so that will be your monthly food bill". That's how stupid it is. If you had an arrangement where your landlord paid for board, that would be exactly how your food bill gets determined. Most people find that it's better for people to purchase their own food directly. But for insurance it's people trying to buy protection from exposure to risk. Normally you wouldn't have to buy protection from risk, but in this case the government mandates it.
Yes, because of this it is a requirement for driving first and foremost, not protection from risk.
Never hard of a landlord billing food that way, usually you pay a static price for a static amount of food. Like in college dorms.
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EPT
