I can hardly believe this, it's like some kind of joke:
The European Union's highest court on Tuesday barred the insurance industry from charging different rates for men and women, saying the widespread practices amounts to sex discrimination against millions.
The ruling ordered changes effective Dec. 21, 2012, to auto insurance, life insurance, medical coverage and other plans, potentially affecting tens of millions of customers across the continent. For example, many women driver would see their car insurance costs rise even though they are considered safer on the road.
EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said it was "now clear that an insurance company must not distinguish between women and men; all customers must be treated equally."
"This is a matter of respect for fundamental rights. It is now also becoming a matter of good business practices," Reding said.
Insurers grudgingly accepted the ruling, but say their current policies are statistically fair and the change will be bad for customers because it will force cost hikes across the board.
The whole point of insurance is that you charge different people a different rate based on how likely you are to have to pay out to them!
But there's more:
Currently millions of insurance policies take gender into account, with insurance companies arguing it is typically easy to check and is statistically sound. The court said that is inappropriate, since there are myriad other factors that could also be considered.
What?
"Taking the gender of the insured individual into account as a risk factor in insurance contracts constitutes discrimination," the court said in a statement.
The Belgian consumer group Test-Achats, which brought the case, said the decision is a "historic ruling."
"The equal treatment of men and women must be absolute," the group said in a statement.
Why exactly?
Even if women are considered safer drivers, the question remains whether a man should be punished by paying more despite taking special care to drive safely. Test-Achats says there are other ways insurance companies can make a distinction, for example, by taking the accident history of a driver more into account.
In traffic-choked Rome, Antonello Parenti welcomed the ruling.
"Men and women are equal, so it has to be a matter of equal opportunities, so it's not fair that women pay less," he said.
I don't blame the Italian gentleman for feeling this way. After all, it's so strange for the principle of equality to be used to help men at the expense of women, as opposed to the other way around.
But this doesn't change the simple fact that the ruling is insane. It's based on illegalizing the technique which allowed the insurance industry to arise in the first place.
If it's not fair to discriminate in insurance based on sex, why not also make it illegal to discriminate by age?
If you do that no young person is going to be retarded enough to get insurance and thus be forced to subsidize the elderly.
Test-Achats also questioned why a woman who smokes and lives more dangerously should be assessed for medical or life insurance by the standards of an average woman while a man who works out, eats healthily and does not smoke cannot see his lifestyle taken into account.
Because it makes more sense to do it that way on average, obviously. Women live longer than men on average. Unless a man is willing to have a very thorough physical to prove that he's so much healthier than the average man that he'll outlive the average woman of his age, there's absolutely no reason not to charge him more than the average woman.
You set insurance rates with the data you have, not the data you might want or wish to have at a later time.
"You have to complement the statistical approach but one which is more respectful of the rights of each individual taking lifestyle into account," the group said.
Never mind that this will make getting insurance an invasive and hellish ordeal!
There's also the issue that this will make it more expensive for insurance companies to set rates, an added expense they'll undoubtedly pass on to their customers:
Philip Jarvis, head of insurance at the international law firm Allen & Overy, said it was tough to put financial figures on the change, but that it was clearly a major ruling.
"It is nontrivial, it is a significant change to the industry," he said in an interview.
He expects overall charges to rise. Since the gender analysis is out, insurers have to spend more money figuring out pricing. Insurers could push up charges across the board to protect themselves or fine tune other, more expensive ways to differentiate between people, he said.
Parting thought: If the EU says insurance discriminates against men because it makes them pay higher premiums than women, can Affirmative Action for white basketball players be far behind?
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