The Hartford
Financial Services Group is cutting life insurance rates for
some women with breast cancer, citing improved treatment and
research that is helping more women survive the
disease. The policies, which will cost the same as for
healthy women, will be available to women 40 and older
who have been treated for early stages of breast cancer.
Previously, those women would have paid more for coverage or
would have been denied coverage.
"Treatment for
breast cancer has improved and continues to improve
every year," said Ann Hoven, chief medical director of the
Hartford's individual life division. "There really is
a great deal of hope that we're winning the fight
against breast cancer."
Due to medical
advances, the death rate for breast cancer has dropped 20%
since 1991, Hoven said.
The Hartford's
new underwriting guidelines provide individual life
insurance policies at standard rates to women who have been
treated for localized, small breast cancer, which is
defined as one centimeter or less, and for women with
a strong prognosis for survival.
Up to 15% of all
life insurance applicants who have been treated for
stage-I breast cancer in the past five years--more
than 100,000 women--would be eligible for life
insurance policies at standard rates, Hoven said.
A 50-year-old
woman who has been treated for early-stage breast cancer
and does not smoke could buy a $500,000, 20-year term life
insurance policy for an annual premium of $1,545. The
same coverage before the new pricing included a
surcharge of $2,500 a year for five years, or $12,500.
There is not yet
enough data on mortality rates to expand the policy to
women under 40, Hoven said.
Industry
representatives could not say whether the policy is a
departure for the life insurance industry. But David
F. Woods, chief executive of the National Association
of Insurance and Financial Advisors, said the Hartford
is "aggressively reaching out to a population that thought
it could not get life insurance." (AP)