Insurance and the Sociologies of Markets
Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: In 2010, the Constitutional Tribunal of Chile dictated that “the risk table”, which was used to differentiate premiums of insurance policies within the health insurance industry in that country, violated the constitutional right to an equal access to healthcare.1 The table was not strictly an invention of the insurers. It had been in use since a previous controversy, when regulators and insurance companies agreed that while the price of a similar policy could not change depending on the health condition of the potential user, it could vary depending on socio-demographic variables such as sex and age. The case of 2010, in turn, was based on the claim that charging a higher premium to young children, old people and women was discriminatory. More generally, what the table and the heated controversy initiated after the decision of the Constitutional Court illustrate is that “price” in this particular financial service is not only a matter of supply and demand, but rather the product of the interaction of a much wider range of actors, including regulators, lawyers, policy makers, members of parliament, consumer associations and representatives of the industry.
Author: José Ossandón
Institution: Copenhagen Business School
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2553402206