Why is it not discrimination for insurance companies to charge more based on gender, age, or marital status?

Answer:
Statistics prove that young male drivers have more accidents and cause more accidents than 40 year old married men. Pick up a newspaper any day and check out the accidents. They charge by the probability a certain individual will be involved in an accident and be at fault.

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Because it's the american way to screw people by means of meaningless justifications

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Because your government allows it

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It is not discrimination if they can prove statistically that the age, gender, or marital status has an impact. For example, it is statistically proven that women live longer than men, therefore life insurance policies for women are usually less.

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probably because no one has challenged their practices..

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It IS discrimination, but of a lawful sort. Unfortunately, the word is often improperly used, to refer only to discrimination on inappropriate criteria. But the insurance actuaries have a legitimate reason for applying the criteria that they use: the risks vary with those factors, and others. And if an insurer is to price his policies correctly, they must reflect the risks involved.

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I don't know about you, but I am tired of these large industries shoveling their crap and our elected officials making it possible for us to unwillingly eat it!

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because those examples you gave don't have the exact medical history as the other , so it would cost them either less or more to cover one

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Discriminatory practices have to be based upon the premise that certain classes of people are being discriminated against simply because they are in that class. For example, not renting an apartment to Catholics simply because they are Catholics. There is no compelling interest as to why anyone would do this.

But one can show a compelling interest when it comes to various insurance rates. Buying a $1 million life insurance policy will be cheaper for a 21-year-old woman than it would be for a 90-year-old man simply because odds are that the older man will die (and collect) before the younger woman would.

Hence, it is not discriminatory to charge more for the premium to the older man than for the younger woman.

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dude did you miss economics 101?cannot believe the stupid questions on this forum???? do you morons understand risk versus cost? the greater the risk,the higher the cost!stop this weepy lib social sh*it,it's all about the money..

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i totally agree with your beliefs. the answer is that the insurance lobbies are very strong in state legislatures. Another good Q for them and the people that are saying the statistical analysis why dont they do statistical analysis based on race?

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It's a matter of law. The Constitution protects us against discrimination. Before the Constitutional right can be triggered, there must be a "state actor", (i.e. government official, police, state, etc.). Since insurance companies are private companies, they do not have to conform to the standard of a state actor. Therefore, they can make their policies based on things like age, gender, driving history, etc. and get away with it.