City challenges higher health insurance rates for women

City Attorney Dennis Herrera has filed a lawsuit challenging a state law allowing insurers to charge women more for health insurance than men. (Examiner file photo)

SAN FRANCISCO — The city of San Francisco sued the state of California in Superior Court Tuesday to challenge a law permitting so-called gender rating by health insurance companies.

In gender rating, companies are allowed to charge women higher rates than men for individual health insurance policies. The law applies to rates paid by people who buy individual policies because they do not have the group health insurance often supplied by employers.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said a report by the National Women's Law Center found that California women under the age of 55 pay up to 39 percent more for individual health insurance than men.

The lawsuit claims the different rates for women are discriminatory and violate the California Constitution.

Separately, State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill on Jan. 15 that would prohibit gender rating by health insurance companies.

Herrera said if that bill passes, the city lawsuit will become unnecessary.

The city attorney said, "Women who are priced out of private health coverage by insurance companies' discriminatory practices are often forced to rely on public hospitals and clinics instead.

"So, gender rating isn't simply unfair to women -- it's unfair to all taxpayers who are forced to subsidize health insurers' discriminatory pricing schemes," Herrera said.

The defendants in the lawsuit are the state of California, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and Department of Managed Care Director Lucinda Ehnes.

Poizner spokesman Darryl Ng said officials in the Department of Insurance had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment.

Ng added, "The Department of Insurance cannot pick and choose which laws it upholds and which it will not uphold. So we will implement the law until the Legislature changes it or the courts intervene."

Other state laws allow different rates for women and men for life and auto insurance and in those cases, women receive lower rates.

Matt Dorsey, a spokesman for Herrera, said the lawsuit takes no position on the validity of gender rating in other types of insurance because a lack of those types of insurance does not affect the city's services and budget in the same way that a lack of health insurance does.