On July 7, while Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) was campaigning for the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential primary, he proposed a social welfare insurance policy to ensure that physically and mentally challenged people would have some form of accident or life insurance.
The Financial Supervisory Commission said that the issue of disabled people being refused by insurance companies does not exist.
The following day, it issued a clarification, stating that insurance companies cannot turn down physically and mentally disabled applicants without cause, adding that any breach is punishable by law.
One wonders what the actual situation is.
Take people who have had poliomyelitis for instance: Those who have experienced the disease’s minor aftereffects can still apply for insurance after a thorough medical examination, but an accident caused by their disability would be excluded from the contract.
This means that a person with polio who falls from their wheelchair cannot claim insurance. Such a policy is meaningless to physically challenged people.
For people who have had severe polio, accident insurance is refused, while extra fees are charged for life insurance or catastrophic illness insurance, if they are not rejected outright.
People with other types of physical disabilities face similar problems, which explains the low proportion of physically disabled people covered by insurance.
People with mental illness face an even worse situation: Those with depression, schizophrenia, delusional disorder or bipolar disorder are rejected by insurance companies. So people with a mental illnesses are not covered and cannot claim any insurance if an accident occurs, even if they are not experiencing symptoms.
Article 7 of the Regulations Governing Business Solicitation, Policy Underwriting and Claim Adjusting of Insurance Enterprises (保險業招攬及核保理賠辦法) stipulates that insurance enterprises are prohibited from “treating an insured unfairly because of his or her disability,” and the commission has also made it clear that insurance companies cannot, without cause, refuse to respond to a disabled person’s inquiries about business solicitation or underwriting procedures.
However, the law does not prohibit insurance companies from refusing to underwrite a policy when the physical conditions of the disabled person fail to meet their underwriting requirements.
The purpose of insurance is to diversify risk and share it among people to achieve social stability, but the insurance industry somehow disregards this, and companies frequently refuse to underwrite a policy for people who they regard as “high risk.”
Moreover, insurance products are quite expensive. Take whole-life and medical insurance for instance: The total premium paid to the company is almost the amount of an approved claim.
This is tantamount to handing money over to the insurance company.
When insurance firms are driven by profit and unwilling to be socially responsible, disregarding fairness and justice, the government should take on that responsibility and launch insurance for physically and mentally disabled people.
Otherwise, if a family’s economic situation becomes untenable because of an accident, the situation might result in suicide or filicide, and then society would have to pay an even greater price.
Yang Chun-chieh is an insurance solicitor.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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