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Manulife to offer insurance to HIV-positive Canadians

April 25th, 2016  |  Canadian Business

Life insurance is sometimes one of the more difficult insurance policies to obtain especially if you’re not a fully healthy adult. For Canadians living with HIV, getting life insurance was impossible. Until now.

Manulife Financial announced that they will extend life insurance coverage up to $2 million to HIV-positive Canadians given they satisfy the policy’s conditions. Those conditions include adults aged 30 to 65 years old on a stable course of antiretroviral therapy. Unfortunately this would exclude some of Canada’s 75,000 HIV-positive citizens, but it is an important step forward in an industry that is traditionally a little slow to change. What’s better is that the changes applies across Manulife’s business across North America which includes 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States.

The coverage extension reflects the massive differences in quality of life for HIV-positive people. Mortality rates have vastly improved and there is no longer a social stigma around the disease. While modern day HIV treatments have been in use for years, insurance companies need time to analyze the effectiveness of new treatments and measure survival rates.

Hopefully other providers will soon follow suit.