
Canadian man changes gender on government IDs for cheaper car insurance - breitling
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/change-gender-identification-insurance-alberta-1.4754416?cmp=rss
======
GhostVII
It's interesting how people generally consider it acceptable for insurance
companies to discriminate based on gender, when that discrimination would
probably not be considered OK in other areas. You don't choose your gender,
why should you be punished for it? Would people also be OK if insurance
companies discriminated based on race? Surely there is some correlation
between race and collision risk as well.

~~~
derefr
I know you’re trying to do a _reductio ad absurdam_ here, but insurance
companies already do discriminate based on race. In fact, it would be
irresponsible for medical insurance providers, in particular, to _not_
discriminate (that is, have different premiums) based on race.

Black people have more heart attacks, white people are more likely to develop
Seasonal Affective Disorder in the same geographic region, etc. It’s nothing
to do with predicting behaviour, it’s just differing physiologies, causing
different levels of risk of certain physiological conditions irrespective of
the choices we make or how we’re raised.

As well, different races respond better or worse to different drugs. There
might be a cheap way to treat hispanic people for a condition but only an
expensive way to treat any other race. In that situation, if there was
actuarial data saying that Hispanic person A and non-Hispanic person B had an
equal chance of developing that condition, it would make sense for person B’s
premiums to be higher, no?

If you can predict, per person, not only the chance of an event causing a
condition requiring an insurance-covered response; but also predict, per
person, the _size_ of the total insurance pay-out from a given event, then
people who will need more expensive treatments for the same condition will
need higher premiums. It’s like flood insurance: insuring a house closer to
the coast costs more, but insuring a _larger_ house also costs more. Because
the pay-out will have to be higher to fix a larger house, even though the
flood was the same. Same damage—more expensive solution required.

~~~
rdl
In the US, it is illegal to use race (or gender), both of which are highly
predictive of health care costs. You can use age and smoking, but that’s about
it, at least on individual issuance under ACA. The age increase is about 50%
of what the true actuarial cost is, so the young subsidize the old.

The result is a healthy 26mo white man gets overcharged and a pregnant,
unhealthy, overweight 40yo black woman is undercharged. Usually this just
means the 26yo chooses not to get insurance.

(Men are cheaper because they don’t have as many routine medical exams, they
don’t go in to the doctor generally even when they should, they don’t get
pregnant and their health problems seem to include sudden out-of-hospital
death more than chronic conditions. That makes them substantially cheaper to
insure even if not actually “healthier”.)

Pre existing conditions and known upcoming things (like, planning to get
pregnant) or superior knowledge of one’s health status and risk profile make
health insurance a really defective marketplace.

~~~
janlukacs
And that my friends is how socialism fails, and everybody loses (after an
initial period when people are generally satisfied).

~~~
dang
Please keep generic ideological comments off HN.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
cameldrv
It’s a tough philosophical question as to whether it is fair to discriminate
based on gender to determine insurance rates. In the U.S. we split the
difference. For car insurance and life insurance, where men have significantly
greater risk, men pay more, because they cost the insurance company more. For
health insurance, where women cost the insurance company more, insurance
companies are forced to charge the same rates, because it’s wrong to make
someone pay more for something based on an inherent trait they have no control
over.

~~~
thrden
That doesn't seem like splitting the difference as much as putting the costs
on men...

~~~
rabboRubble
Obviously you never tried getting private insurance that covers pregnancy pre-
ACA. Always a separate rider, always expensive. Whoopsie if you didn't catch
that fact, failed to get a separate rider, then went on to have pregnancy
complication. Hello bankruptcy! Hell, even with the pregnancy rider, a
complicated pregnancy put a lot of insured people into the poorhouse.

~~~
rabboRubble
Pregnancy complication example #1. Even with insurance, pregnancy can be
treated as a preexisting condition and denied coverage. Wonder if her plan
excluded the rider?

[http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/canadian-woman-gives-birth-
americ...](http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/canadian-woman-gives-birth-america-
gets-1m-hospital-bill)

------
tudelo
I wonder... is there any good solution to this issue from either side? Outside
of legitimate gender change (bear with me -- I know some of you don't think
this is possible but lets go with the assumption) can you really blame the
guy? And as an insurance company what can you do about it? I would say maybe
we could have flat rates but then that just incentivizes the "good" class to
go to an insurer who values their "goodness".

~~~
QasimK
As a society you can make it illegal to discriminate on factors that a person
has no control over.

~~~
oh_sigh
Per the article the EU already banned gender discrimination for insurance
rates in 2011. Catch up Canada!

I wonder why it is that car insurance charges higher rates to young males(who
on average cost more than young females), but medical insurance as far as I
can tell is equally priced for young men and young women, even though young
women generally have higher health care costs than young men(primarily through
childbirth and greater use of health services).

I don't want to be cynical but I imagine if a health care company in the US or
Canada actually did start charging more for some class of young women vs young
men, it would make international news and lead to new anti-discrimination laws
for health insurance

~~~
rich-and-poor

      Catch up Canada!
    

No thanks. We understand that men are more reckless than women and we refuse
to needlessly harm our insurance companies.

~~~
fcbrooklyn
It won't harm the insurance companies, as it'll be a level playing field, and
they'll all have to simply quote new rates that work out for them given the
new data they're allowed to consider. The parties harmed will be, on average,
women, whose rates will go up, and the beneficiaries will be, on average, men,
especially young men, whose rates will come down.

------
derefr
British Columbia will soon support answering “not specified” for gender on
identity documents. I wonder how insurance providers will cope with that. Will
they demand you tell _them_ a gender? Will they try to infer it? Will they use
low-statistical-power actuarial data for the insurance usage rates of “not-
specified people”?

~~~
stavrianos
Easy: anyone who isn't specified gets the higher rate.

~~~
empthought
This is exactly correct.

------
quxbar
Let's see if he'll keep the identification when he next applies for a job or a
home loan?

~~~
dsfafsdaf
Why not?

IIRC, in Canada, its illegal to ask those questions during the application.

Then, when HR is doing their diversity calculations, he boosts their employed
woman trans numbers.

Don't see him loosing out much.

------
LordDragonfang
So the simple solution to this type of manipulation is adding a part to the
gender change request that says "I swear under threat of legal penalty that I
identify as [gender]". Doesn't hurt trans people and makes abuses of the
system like this clear cases of legal fraud.

~~~
natrik
How would you be able to tell the difference between actual personal
identification and a lie?

------
EMRZ
Here in Argentina a man from Salta changed his gender to retire early.

------
tathougies
Favorite quote:

> "If you're going to declare on any document, you need to be truthful," he
> said. "If not, you're making a fraudulent claim. This could impact you for
> any future insurance application that you make, or any other aspect of your
> life."

Unless the insurance commissioner is going to provide an objective definition
of gender that can be externally and independently verified, I'm afraid that
he really has no grounds on which to claim David is a man, rather than a
gender-nonconforming woman who prefers male pronouns.

------
notadoc
Is it gender discrimination to charge one gender more than another for the
same service?

And if so, and more broadly, is there a problem with changing gender
identification to gain a preferential price or service?

------
donald123
What if the insurance company used machine learning to calculate the premium,
which resulted in correlations with gender, race, etc.? Is that also
considered discrimination?Whose fault is that?

~~~
empthought
You would have to show that gender/race were not inputs to the machine
learning algorithm. Correlations with inputs that were not restricted would
not be a problem (in many situations ZIP code is "close enough" for race.)

------
janlukacs
The amount of attention and resources spent on "genderism" in the western
world is really astounding and accelerating. One has to ask why?

------
aequitas
In the Netherlands we had a similar thing. An car insurance marketed
specifically to woman, with lower rates, nice pink website and you even got a
free purse as a welcome gift. But due to anti-discrimination laws you could
simply apply as a man as well, if you could stand the pink website. Of course
you got the free purse as well.

------
dsfyu404ed
Well we've all thought of it now someone's done it (well lots of people have
probably done it, this guy is just the first one to risk telling people he's
done it). $91/mo adds up.

------
marianov
An man in Argentina changed legal gender so he can retire earlier :
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5544173/Argentinian-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5544173/Argentinian-
man-legally-changes-gender-retire-earlier.html)

~~~
tathougies
how is it okay that a woman can retire earlier? Men die earlier than women as
it is, so this law effectively doubles the amount of time women can enjoy
retirement..

------
kolbe
How the could car insurance cost $4500 a year? What are you doing in Canada?

~~~
mrtron
Minimum coverage is fairly comprehensive, and they love to charge the hell out
of younger folks.

~~~
theandrewbailey
If a car loan is involved, maximum insurance might be required as a condition.
Combining that with young male driver, you get a very large number. Also,
Canadian dollars, not USD.

------
reaperducer
Next step: Olympic gold!

~~~
morgtheborg
Gender identity is one thing, power to you, but at the point we start to let
males compete in females sport we've lost our minds.

How do we make it fair? Is it sufficient to lower T to get rid of the
advantage? What about females who naturally have higher T levels?

What if, shockingly /s, bone density and height are relevant as an advantage
in some sports?

God, I hate even thinking about it.

Transgender rights > Female rights, with the harm going to female athletes.
How unsurprisingly sexist.

~~~
belorn
We already have that problem with genetics interfering with sports. Height has
a strong correlation in basketball, and blood levels with endurance sport.
Weight and height are used to limit unfair competition in horse racing and
boxing.

So one way to keep our minds and still eliminating segregated women and men
sport is to segregate based on other attributes that correlate to an unfair
advantage, just like those examples above.

~~~
morgtheborg
I'm cool with that as well. Happy as a clam if we want to start making a bunch
of sport distinctions around advantages such as height, T, bone density, etc.

However, until we do so, the problem remains that there are clearly advantages
physically to being a man and that is why we have male and female sporting
events. That distinction doesn't magically go away because someone does not
identify with their gender. The division isn't about gender, it's about sex.

~~~
belorn
While we are in an agreement on optimal solution, I don't see why we need to
wait. We still have NBL running, and the average hight for men there is about
1 foot (30cm) more. Similar, there were a study rather recently that looked at
winter OS winners and found that about 80% of them had blood levels that
represented (if I get the zeros right) 1/1000000 chance of naturally
occurring. OS is not being put on hold.

Those problems have remained for a very long time and yet we have done very
little to remove those clear unfair advantages. What should we do until we fix
them? I prefer common solution to similar issues so what ever fix that is
deemed acceptable should be usable for all form of genetic advantages, and it
would likely resolve a bunch of doping problems at the same time.

------
schappim
.

~~~
tomp
How about non-unisex toilets and women-only domestic violence shelters?
Personally, I oppose them, but it appears that most people support them,
"discrimination" not-withstanding...

~~~
dsfafsdaf
"women-only domestic violence shelters" what exactly do you oppose? That there
are no equivalent men's shelters, or that men aren't allowed in?

To this day my wife refuses to tell any man the location of her shelter from
when her ex abused her. Might not fit into the modern gender zeitgeist, but I
fully support her.

~~~
tomp
Unequal availability of assistance/capacity.

~~~
dsfafsdaf
OP said: "women-only domestic violence shelters"

Having men-only domestic violence shelter hardly requires removing the gender
requirements of our current shelters.

------
1996
> "I'm a man, 100 per cent. Legally, I'm a woman," he said.

> "I did it for cheaper car insurance."

Yeah, I see what you did.

"it's because of the insurance!! I swear!!"

------
jedberg
This is a perfect example of "AI gone wrong" even though there was no AI
involved.

The costs of insurance are based on actuarial tables, which are really just
calculations based on large chunks of historical data, much like an AI. And
much like an AI, the result essentially magnifies the biases that already
exist in the data (biases that may be accurate or may not be).

The tables, nor the AI, care about ethics or perception. They are simply the
result of the inputs given.

Do men really have more tickets and accidents? Maybe. Or maybe they just get
caught more.

It just highlights how careful we have to be about biases, real or accidental,
as we rely more and more on mathematical models based on data.

~~~
quxbar
Men measurably impact the bottom line of insurance companies more. Actuarial
math is not 'AI', there's no 'magnification of bias'. The whole point of the
calculation is to eliminate bias so that the company makes sound decisions.
Please don't generalize things that you haven't made an effort to understand.
When you say stuff like this, you're making it harder to fight actual bias in
the world, because you make people not take your point seriously.

~~~
jedberg
I have a pretty deep understanding actually.

Please explain to me how making an actuarial table with different data sets
would get you the same answer without bias.

~~~
lykr0n
Bias, according to google:

> prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with
> another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.

Data can't be bias. It can be a misrepresentation or inaccurate, but not bias.
If I have an accurate data-set that say ethnic group X in area Y has a higher
rate of violence, and because of that I make the choice to charge higher
premiums for group X- is that bias? No.

You can't scream bias when you don't like the conclusions the data draws.
Drawing conclusions from data isn't bias-ed(?) but using only that data might
be.

~~~
natrik
Technically data can be biased because what you call a misrepresentation is
termed bias:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias)

~~~
DoctorOetker
Don't forget _treatment bias_ , also known as "nature versus nurture". One can
totally remove sampling and selection bias by tallying the _whole_ population
in the measurement, say in antiquity. I predict the data (which can't have
sampling and selection bias) would describe how slaves have a higher injury
and mortality rate: after whipping or overworking or being fed inferior food,
the injured are last in line when the food is dispensed etc. This is real
world _treatment bias_. How _just_ is it to increase say insurance rate for
the slaves? (I know they probably didn't have insurance in antiquity...)

Edit:

In other words, statistics done correctly (i.e. representatively) on the real
world can tell us what the real world (and its status quo) looks like, but
tells us nothing about the ethics of the situation.

