Religious discrimination in insurance

[Richards, Edward P.]

Potential extra expense is an issue, and I assume that there will be some extra expense.  Yet weren't the civil rights laws found to prevent life insurance companies from charging blacks more for life insurance, despite their higher actuarial risk, and to prevent charging women more for pensions, despite their longer life expectancy?  Group health insurance shelters all sorts of elective behavior - I certainly resent paying more for smoker's ill health, and that is more of an elective choice than religion.  As a matter of principle, once you buy into the averaging of insurance, the exception game gets pretty difficult - does the 1st amendment mean that I can deny care to Witness but not to the smoker?
 
Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Volokh, Eugene [mailto:VOLOKH at mail.law.ucla.edu]
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2002 8:39 PM
To: RELIGIONLAW at listserv.ucla.edu
Subject: Re: Religious discrimination in insurance



        I'm just curious, not as a doctrinal matter (the question there is whether insurance antidiscrimination laws have a "reasonable accommodation" provision, and I doubt that they do) but as a policy matter:  Is the bloodless surgery more expensive than normal surgery?

        I for one wouldn't be wild about having to pay, as a policyholder, for the extra cost occasioned by someone else's religious beliefs, and I'd be reluctant to see the law impose such a burden.  Query whether such a law, incidentally, would be constitutional unless it had some requirement that the religious care be not materially more expensive (see Thornton v. Caldor).  I don't think such a requirement should be unconstitutional, but I also don't think it would be right as a policy matter.

        Eugene 

        -----Original Message----- 
From:   Richards, Edward P. [SMTP:RichardsE at UMKC.EDU] 
Sent:   Thursday, January 24, 2002 6:15 PM 
To:     RELIGIONLAW at listserv.ucla.edu 
Subject:        Religious discrimination in insurance 

        Just had a question from a lawyer about an interesting health law case.  A Jehovah's Witness has commercial health insurance.  He needs surgery, but the plan refuses to authorize care at a medical center that offers bloodless surgery.  (There are well established but not widely available techniques to reduce the chance of needing blood in surgery, which is important if the patient has refused blood.)  The plans says it is providing standard of care and does not need to accommodate the patient's religious beliefs.  Since the plan's care is no care as far as the patient is concerned, he has to pay for the bloodless procedure himself.

        Does this raise any issues under the civil rights laws? 

        Thanks! 

        Ed 

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