Life Insurance and Critical Illness Insurance. Premiums to rise for some women
Women whose family line has a history of ovarian or breast cancer could face higher insurance premiums or be refused cover altogether under proposals from the Association of British Insurers (ABI).
The insurance industry wants the right to ask these women when they apply for life and critical illness policies whether they have been tested for the gene mutations that increase the likelihood of them developing the cancers. But before the insurers can include these questions on their application forms, they must receive approval from the Genetics and Insurance Committee, the organisation that advises the Government on this sort of issue.
The ABI will soon be requesting this Committee for permission to include the controversial questions which ask women whether they have been tested positive for BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations. It’s these genes that are present in 1 in 10 new cases of ovarian cancer and 1 in 20 new cases of breast cancer diagnosed. Women who have damaged BRCA genes have a 14 – 18% chance of developing breast cancer sometime in their lives and approximately 1 in 850 women in Britain inherit a faulty BRCA1 gene.
A note posted on the web site for the Genetics and Insurance Committee said, ” The Committee expects that the Association of British Insurers will submit in late 2006/2007 four revised and updated applications for the use of adverse results from the predictive genetic tests of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes (breast/ovarian cancer) in helping to determine insurance premiums for life and critical illness insurance”.
To date, in the UK insurance application forms are only allowed to ask for the results of predictive tests for Huntington’s disease and then only when the application is for cover exceeding £500,000 for life insurance or over £300,000 for critical illness insurance or over £30,000 for payment protection insurance. This policy is set by an agreement entered into by the ABI which is due to expire in 2011 but Harpal Karlcut, Chairman of the ABI’s Genetics Working Party, is reported in the insurance magazine “Cover”, as saying that the Association would like changes.
“We are looking to get approval for the breast cancer test by the end of the year. The two breast cancers are the next conditions that we will look at but after that we don’t see the need to look at other conditions”. He then went on to add a rider saying, “We do keep an eye out for what diseases may come up in the future but there is nothing else on the horizon”. We add another rider – yet!
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