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 Previously, HIV-positive individuals would automatically be denied
life insurance, said Bill Grant, who co-founded the financial
services company AEQUALIS with Andrew Terrell.
The plans will be offered through a partnership between Prudential
Financial Inc. and AEQUALIS, which focuses on serving people with
HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. People who qualify will be offered
standard plans that are the same as those offered to any other
customer.
The announcement on Tuesday of the insurance plans coincides with
World AIDS Day.
The policies are "not cheap, but they’re not prohibitively expensive
either," said Terrell, who found HIV-positive people have been
unfairly excluded from the life insurance market.
"People with HIV (have) much longer life expectancies than insurance
companies gave them credit for," he said.
GETTING OLDER WITH HIV
In 2013, researchers reported that a 20-year-old who is newly
diagnosed with HIV and who starts treatment immediately can expect
to live another 50 years.
Thanks to new therapies that allow for longer survival, more
attention is being paid to finding a cure and to treating conditions
tied to HIV and aging, said Dr. Michelle Cespedes of Mount Sinai
School of Medicine in New York City.
"There are more and more clinical trials looking at how we can
intervene on these comorbidities," she said, citing cardiovascular
disease and forgetfulness as conditions that affect HIV-positive
people at younger ages.
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Oriol Gutierrez, editor-in-chief of POZ magazine, which reports on
people with HIV, said it's not completely clear how the virus
affects the aging process.
"It does seem generally speaking that our bodies are aging faster
and HIV is somewhat involved in that process," he said.
He told Reuters Health that in addition to physical aging issues,
the mental health of long-term survivors needs to be addressed,
especially for those who lived through the worst of the epidemic
decades ago.
"There has been a lot of focus on resurrecting support groups for
survivors," Gutierrez said.
Terrell hopes the fact that the plans offered through Prudential and
AEQUALIS are the same as plans for anyone else will help fight
stigma attached to living with HIV.
"I think that is very important," he said.
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