Good Bad 2

It is amazing how almost every insurance company is suddenly excessively focused on HIV insurance!

 

Is this good or bad? Not for me to judge BUT……

 

A few years back and I am talking not more than two or three years ago, (2012) not one insurance company would insure a PLWHA. I was in fact approached by an employee from a large insurance company that was interested in me securing individuals and receiving a ‘finder’s fee/commission’ from this. I was not about to exploit my fellow PLWHA.

 

Now almost every insurance company is on the bandwagon as HIV is considered a manageable dis-ease.

 

GOOD:

Yes, in the sense that a person can now ensure that their families are taken care of once they have passed on. The fact is that it makes a person much more aware of managing their HIV status as the insurance institute only covers you if your CD4 count is at a firm level and above a set figure, your Viral Load is below 1000 copies/ml and you have been on ARV’s for a certain period of time.

 

This is GOOD! 

There are some insurance companies that have two chronic dis-eases that they focus on which gives you the assurance that they must be reasonably well informed and remain focused on new and relevant information.

 

BAD:

What does this say about our HIV statistics? Are there more people living with HIV and are a target market not to be cast aside, I think so. Is it that the sales teams have been ‘forced’ to focus on PLWHA as highly responsive potential?

With 400 thousand new infections in 2012 and 350 thousand in 2014, speaks for itself. These are the infected PLWHA that have tested and we know of!  That is a THREE QUARTER of a MILLION people!!

I was in a conversation recently and someone stated ‘Oh so our infections have dropped?’

Aaah, that figure is SERIOUSLY unacceptable whether they have dropped by 10k or 50k. There are some countries that do not have three quarter of a million people.

 

This is BAD!

Are we becoming complacent about HIV in this country? I would say yes, most definitely but while I agree that we all have rights to healthcare, insurance and the rest, why are the insurance companies not being more active in creating awareness around this HIV issue.

 

CONCLUSION:

Make use of HIV Activists as Ambassadors to promote a healthy lifestyle, not only for people infected,
affected and those that can potentially become infected.

Firstly by doing this, people will be informed and secondly the insurance companies will benefit by keeping the community healthy and able to support their families for much longer and have cover for a much longer period of time. #justsaying #nobrainer


PLWHA – People Living with HIV & AIDS

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