Is the discrimination worth it as a deterrent? Or is it just to save the instance companies $$$?
Discrimination is the insurance industry’s entire business model.
Discrimination as a word doesn’t mean a bad thing, it literally just means “to choose between 2 or more of something/someone”. As long as there is choice, there is discrimination. If I needed a plumber, and two people wanted the job, I would discriminate against the one without a plumber’s license and/or experience. I think that’s probably sensible discrimination.
These days discrimination is used to imply some form of social harm, especially towards a marginalised community, and the word “against” frequently follows it. The question really is though: Is an act of discrimination harmful or not, to whom it is harmful, and do the harms outweigh the benefits?
Is the insurance industry’s decision to choose prices for people based on their medical situations harmful discrimination? For the customers? Definitely. For the insurance company? Definitely not.
And then the choice really boils down to which of the two you think are more valuable, for whatever it is you value most. People, or insurance companies?
As someone who values less suffering in the world and thinks all people are worthy of dignity, safety and equitable experiences, and huge profits for a private business are not constructive in delivering those values, profit-seeking health and life insurance companies can burn to the ground for all I care. Bankrupting people for things they didn’t choose causes far too much suffering in this world.
Stress drives people to suicide in the first place, and insurance companies feed on that to live like social parasites.
Just because I loathe systems such as capitalism that reward antisocial and exploitative behaviours, it doesn’t mean I can’t have a nuanced take on language history and use. 😉
People don’t understand how expensive having a disability is, and all the little ways it messes with your existence beyond the medical symptoms themselves. It creates additional unnecessary stress and suffering. Like, just for a small insurance example, only being able to find one expensive insurance company willing to sell you travel insurance for a work trip and having to negotiate that with your employer’s HR department. Lucky I found that one company at all, I guess.
Not to take away from your main point at the end, but that’s just not what discrimination means. Discrimination in this context isn’t just making a decision between choices, it’s when that decision is made unjustly or based on prejudice.
So yes, it’s wrong to put profits ahead of people’s well-being. But the question was whether insurance companies’ policies to not pay out for causes of death that are strongly correlated with poor mental health unjustly treat people with mental health issues.
To be honest, I think that’s an interesting point, because while I similarly find the whole concept of health and life insurance abhorrent, I think these policies are in place so people don’t take their own lives for the sake of the insurance money for their loved ones. In that respect, they may save a handful of lives, and you could argue that makes it a just policy. I’m not sure I 100% buy that argument either, I just think there’s more to the question than just whether insurance companies are generally moral.
I agree that the ‘unjust’ part is implied here. However, it is certainly not part of any textbook definition of discrimination.
Because the ‘unjust’ part is implied so often, people have started to change the meaning of the word discrimination. I think that is quite dangerous, given how essential the word is in various constitutions and laws.
Discrimination being tied to unjust, prejudiced, unfair, etc. treatment is part of all the dictionary definitions I found:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discrimination
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/discrimination
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/discrimination
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095721450
I was at a management training and HR was covering protected classes of people. They asked if it was ever ok to discriminate when hiring. I thought it was a trick question, and said yes. Everyone was shocked because they were expecting me to say something racist. I said it’s perfectly fine to discriminate against someone with no work history, bad references, multiple jobs in a very short time etc.
Moment of silence and then they say: “No. It is NEVER ok to discriminate.”
Fucking morons.
No. The word differentiate doesn’t work because I wasn’t talking about identifying the differences in people I was talking about TREATING PEOPLE DIFFERENTLY based on a single trait.
I thought it was a trick question. That’s why I gave the answer. I know it’s not what they were looking for, but they didn’t have to look at me like I was from another planet.
As a manager I DISCRIMINATED against people who didn’t show up for work. I DISCRIMINATED against people who showed up drunk. Those people got different treatment. They lost hours. They didn’t get raises. They got fired. I would NEVER discriminate based on race or gender or color of hair. Personally, I wouldn’t discriminate against drug users, but that same company demanded that we did.
It’s still discrimination it’s just that sometimes it’s legal and sometimes it’s not.
Ps. (For the dense of you)
I love your post; it should be a copypasta. Topping off a semantic argument by insisting others are dense is so ironic that I don’t know if you’re sincere, or some kind of galaxy-brained performance artist.
Ps. please don’t interpret my post as a rebuttal of your point. You want to argue about the definition of the word discriminate, I want to argue about the definition of the word definition.
From a dictionary perspective, you’re right. From a business legal risk-avoidant and financial self-protection perspective, you’re dead wrong. Words are often used with a context-specific definition, and you’re not supposed to use the word ‘discrimination’ at all in a workplace. Because it will cause the legal and HR departments more work, and therefore cost the organisation more.
Just let the HR rep do the script and teach you how to avoid accountability when prioritising profit over people. It’s less painful that way.
Just let the HR rep do the script and teach you how to avoid accountability when prioritising profit over people. It’s less painful that way.
Profit over people IS painful to me. Eat the rich.
As a fairly logic/science based thinker, it’s so frustrating seeing people drop all nuance and detail from their knowledge. And then they pass it on, judge others by their “knowledge” and it just keeps spreading. Eventually the general public knows that an elephant has a trunk, but will scorn you if you say it also has a tail.
The whole point of the “protected class” is that you may not discriminate using those criteria. The corollary is that you may discriminate using other criteria. Otherwise, there would be no point in creating a “protected class”.
Exactly. I guess they hadn’t realized that everyone that applied and didn’t get hired had technically been discriminated against for some reason, and they didn’t want a record of them saying in ANY form that “discrimination” was ok.
Decades later all 30 done of their locations got their franchise revoked and they closed down. Has nothing to do with the story, but vindication! 😂
