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SHOULD ANTI-VAXXERS PAY MORE FOR LIFE INSURANCE? MARTIN HESSE reports on an actuary’s research into vaccination as a risk factor in determining your premiums on a life policy.
ON the face of it, people who are not vaccinated against vaccinepreventable deadly diseases pose a higher risk to life insurance companies than those who are. Should they be penalised accordingly? This was the intriguing question posed by actuary Pamela Hellig, director of client services at MBE Consulting, at last year’s annual convention of the Actuarial Society of South Africa. Hellig’s presentation was based on her paper “The ethical and practical considerations of using vaccination history as a rating factor in life insurance underwriting”. When you apply for cover, the life insurance company uses what is known as the underwriting process to assess how risky you are to insure. You are required to fill in a questionnaire on your medical history, occupation and leisure pursuits, among other things. South African insurers also tend to take four general risk factors into account: your age, gender, whether you are a smoker or not, and your socio-economic status, determined by education level and income. With this information, the insurer will assess whether or not
to grant you cover and, if so, what exclusions may apply and what premium you will pay. The lower your overall risk, the lower your premiums will be. In her paper, Hellig makes a case for insurers including your vaccination record as an underwriting factor. VACCINATION PROGRAMMES In the 20th century, Hellig notes, vaccination became one of the most successful medical interventions in history. Smallpox was officially eradicated by 1980, and vaccines have successfully contained many of the world’s most devastating infectious diseases, including polio, diphtheria, typhoid, cholera, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and, more recently, human papillomavirus, which can cause cervical cancer in women. Many vaccines are extremely affordable, and governments worldwide, including ours, offer vaccination programmes free or at very low cost to citizens. Hellig says: “Large-scale administration of vaccines has not only saved countless lives over the past century, but it has also led to a substantial decline in health care costs.”
NON-VAXXERS AND ANTI-VAXXERS Despite their unqualified success, vaccines have been the subject of widespread suspicion and “fake news”, epitomised by the anti-vax movement, which the Covid-19 pandemic only seems to have emboldened. A trigger was the publication In 1998 of a paper by Dr Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, which has been called “the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years”. The paper falsely linked autism to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. It is in this shadow that many people are now hesitant about receiving a vaccine against Covid-19. But the problem is wider than the anti-vax movement, Hellig says. In South Africa, where the childhood vaccination programme is free but not mandatory, take-up is well below target. Many factors may account for this, including a lack of education, societal norms, and what is known as omission bias, where the risks of inaction are perceived to be lower than those of taking an action. And while risks to children are high, the risks to unvaccinated
