Ritter signs law for gender equality in Colorado health insurance rates

Monday, March 29, 2010
Denver Business Journal - by Ed Sealover
http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2010/03/29/daily8.html

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter signed a law Monday that bans providers of individual insurance policies from charging different rates to men and women for identical products.

House Bill 1008 - sponsored by Reps. Sue Schafer, D-Wheat Ridge, and Beth McCann, D-Denver - puts Colorado into the majority of states that have similar laws. Though controversial when Schafer first introduced it in 2009, the legislation eventually got the backing even of insurance companies and passed the House 59-2 before getting its OK from the Senate by a largely partisan 20-13 count.

"It's past time that women were not considered in the private individual insurance market as a pre-existing condition," Schafer told a crowd of some 75 people gathered on the Capitol's west steps to watch the bill-signing.

Because the cost of health care can be more expensive for women, especially younger women, insurance companies traditionally have tended to charge more for their policies. The practice has been banned in the group-insurance markets for nearly half a century, but individual insurers carry it on - and can charge premiums up to 40 percent higher for females in Colorado, said sponsoring Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora.

That statistic remains true even for women who buy health care that does not include coverage of female-only conditions like pregnancy, Schafer said. Because females are more likely to work jobs in which they are not covered by employer-sponsored group insurance, HB 1008 will affect as many as 140,000 women in Colorado, she said.

Senate Republicans still questioned whether bringing down the cost of health care for women would lead insurance companies just to raise the cost of insurance policies for men to even things out. And Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, in trying to make a point about gender discrimination, unsuccessfully tried to add an amendment to ban the common practice of auto insurance companies charging more to young male drivers than to females.

In the end, though, Ritter said that the new law will work in conjunction with the recently enacted federal health care reform to get more women insured and to make it cheaper for women to get health care.

"We must remain committed to improving access, quality and cost containment," the Democratic governor said before signing the bill. "This new bill will make health care more affordable and more accessible for women purchasing insurance in the individual market."

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