Being denied insurance or being charged a premium for a home loan because you had cancer: This is what people who have been in remission for less than ten years face today.
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Being denied insurance or being charged a premium for a home loan because you had cancer: this is what people who have been in remission for less than ten years face today. of the law adopted by the House of Representatives of Belgium and which requires the amendment of the law of 4 April 2014 on insurance. This aims to extend the right to be forgotten to people with a serious medical history who are discriminated against when taking out insurance. A bill introduced in the chamber by Robby De Caluwé and Kathleen Verhelst (Open VLD). It should be noted that the right to be forgotten stipulates that “even if every insured candidate is obliged to communicate his medical history when he takes out insurance, the insurance company cannot take them into account to determine his state of health at that time”. It is currently applied to two types of residual insurance: that which guarantees the repayment of a mortgage relating to the family home in the event of the insured’s death; and that which guarantees repayment of a professional credit in the event of the death of the insured. A royal decree of 26 May 2019 had already made it possible to reduce this discrimination linked to the medical history, by establishing a reference scheme. The period is thus reduced for a certain number of cancers (skin, breast or cervix), for which the insurance company must “forget” this pathology after one year. This royal decree also established the right to be forgotten for certain chronic diseases, such as HIV, hepatitis C and cystic fibrosis. This reference scheme is evaluated every two years by the Federal Center of Expertise according to medical progress, and the law passed on Friday therefore moves forward. It will actually lead to two major changes: First of all, the law again aims at residual balance insurance. The current legislation provides that the insurance company can neither refuse insurance nor provide an additional premium for people who have reached “ten years of recovery”, that is, after the end of a successful treatment and in the absence of relapse. This period will be shortened to “eight years of recovery” from the promulgation of the law, which will take place ten days after the publication in the Belgian Monitor, “certainly before January 1, 2023”, the company’s intention is “to go quickly “. From 1 January 2025, the period will be increased to five years. The second change regarding this type of insurance concerns people who have had cancer before the age of 21. The deadline for not being denied insurance or imposing an additional premium will be reduced to “five years of recovery” as soon as the law comes into force. a “big” supplement for their outstanding balance insurance, declared Patrick Prévot – text bearer for the PS -: “We need to inject more solidarity into the insurance system, because it is totally intolerable that cured people cannot turn the page on their illness and start a life project under normal conditions. […] It is a real step forward to oblige insurance companies to no longer take into account the risks associated with their customers’ previous illness, as recommended by the Cancer Foundation.” The second major change aims to extend the rightful forgetting mechanism to ” guaranteed income” incapacity insurance (or disability insurance) for all workers, whether self-employed, salaried or salaried. A mechanism that will be different as the “death” risk associated with outstanding balance insurance is not identical to the “incapacity” risk. For example with cystic fibrosis, under certain well-defined conditions the sufferer can be insured against the risk of death, but this disease requires daily treatment which takes a long time, it is not certain that the person with cystic fibrosis under the same precise conditions can be insured against the risk for incapacity. forgetfulness for disability insurance will have the same rules (8 year remission, 5 years from 2025), the reference tables will not be similar to those for residual balance insurance. A new scientific study should see the light of day, via the Federal Center for Health Care Expertise. These new specific disability insurance reference tables are to be adopted by Royal Decree.