Yet men are nevertheless viewed as a lesser medical liability than women, who live longer on average because they tend to eat right, exercise more frequently and take better care of themselves.
Men and women start out as equals in Blue Shield's eyes. The pricing chart for the insurer's Balance Plan 1700 -- the plan Hack signed up for -- shows that 18-year-old men and women are both charged $98 a month.
By age 20, women are paying $119 monthly, while men are charged $110.
When they turn 35, women are paying $174 a month compared with the $162 men are paying. By age 45, women are up to $271 a month, while men pay $25 less, or $246.
The gap persists until women and men reach the age of 60. At this point, women are paying $548 a month for insurance, while menfolk see their premium soar to $589.
From 65 onward, just as Medicare is kicking in, women are charged $633 and men are shelling out $681.
None of these rates include dependents.
Epstein couldn't explain the trend, saying again only that Blue Shield's "egghead actuaries" concocted the numbers.
But he emphasized that Blue Shield wasn't the first to come up with gender-specific pricing for individual health insurance. Aetna Inc. apparently introduced the idea to California, followed by Anthem Blue Cross.
"We've done it because our competitors are doing it," Epstein said. "We don't want to get a disproportionate share of high-risk people."
By "high-risk people," what he means is "women."
And what Epstein is basically saying is that if women are indeed costlier to insure, and if Blue Shield doesn't price its policies accordingly, more women will want to be insured by Blue Shield.
Can't have that.
A spokeswoman for Aetna said the company has used gender to set rates since it began offering individual policies in California in 2005. She said the practice reflects "the underlying difference in costs between males and females by age," which is "well documented by actuarial studies."
A spokeswoman for Anthem Blue Cross said the company's individual rates can be affected by "current health status, medical history, age, gender, residence and occupation." She said gender was added to the mix last year.
A Kaiser Permanente spokesman said the company didn't differentiate by gender. But he said Kaiser was aware that other insurers were doing it and was keeping an eye on the market.
