Insurance available to people with HIV is a “huge breakthrough”
This is an awesome breakthrough for human rights! It’s funny how insurance companies and positions of higher power can adjudicate policies based on ignorance. Nice picture too aunty 😀
A Hamilton company’s decision to make life insurance available to people with HIV is a “huge breakthrough”, say New Zealanders living with the virus.
For years, perceptions of HIV/Aids as a death sentence had prevented cover being offered to those with the disease, with anyone applying for life insurance required to sign a form declaring whether or not they had the virus.
But Hamilton insurance broker Your Life and Associates has said it will make life cover available to people with HIV, after advocating on behalf of a woman refused cover by insurance companies.
Jane Bruning, national co-ordinator of HIV/Aids support organisation Positive Women, said the extra premium was only about $3 a week. “It’s not astronomical. That would be the same for anybody with asthma or diabetes.”
Waikato woman Marama Pala, who contracted HIV from former partner Peter Mwai, said people with the virus were now “just like everyone else”. Mr Mwai was jailed for seven years in 1994 for having unprotected sex with five women while knowing he was infected with the virus.
Insurance criteria that ruled out cover for those with HIV were written “way back when it was a death sentence”, before the development of antiretroviral drugs that stalled the progress of the virus, Ms Pala said.
“People with HIV are actually living longer than people with diabetes.”
Read Full Article on: Stuff.co.nz
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