Should HIV Positive Persons Get Life Insurance?

Given that death rates of HIV positive individuals have fallen during the past few years, should they be given access to life insurance? 

By:  Ringo Bones 

The good news is, the death rates of persons who are diagnosed as HIV positive have fallen by as much as 40 percent around the world since 2005. The bad news is that there are still some insurance providers who deny them life insurance. Since the 1980s, patients who are diagnosed to be HIV positive have been denied access to fully underwritten traditional life insurance. But as death rates in HIV positive diagnosed persons continue to fall due to the advent of affordable and increased access to anti-retroviral medication, life insurance underwriting for HIV positive diagnosed persons are now available. 

Ross Deerman, chef executive of All Life provides mortgage and life insurance policies to HIV positive diagnosed persons / AIDS survivors during the past few years in South Africa. During the past five years, death rates of HIV positive diagnosed persons on the African content have fallen by as much as 58-percent but the stigma still remains on traditional insurance underwriters not granting life insurance policies to HIV / AIDS survivors. All Life’s program / business model of giving HIV Positive persons access to fully underwritten traditional life insurance has already spread to other countries with local All Life branches. Maybe insurance providers should also offer healthcare packages designed for lower income HIV positive persons that allow them greater access to anti-retroviral medication. 

Identity Theft Protection Insurance: Utterly Useless Rigmarole?

In the wake of the recent cyber attack of the US Office of Personnel Management, should everyone avail themselves of Identity Theft Protection Insurance?

By: Ringo Bones 

With Mainland Chinese elite hackers of the Shanghai based Unit 61398 as the primary suspects, the recent large scale cyber warfare attack of the US Office of Personnel Management that was uncovered back in the middle of April 2015 and only later publicly announced back in June 5, 2015 that involved as many as 21.5 million individual records were believed to be affected, many a concerned government worker – in the United States and the rest of the world – is now concerned enough to contemplate whether to avail themselves of this “Identity Theft Protection Insurance” in order to protect their personal social security records and related files from being stolen to be used for nefarious criminal means. But does the “average government worker” really need Identity Theft Protection Insurance? 

It can be quite a nightmare for your typical government employee if his or her employee job assignment, job review, and training data were compromised by a hacker skilled enough to infiltrate such well-protected electronic files, but can availing oneself of an Identity Theft Protection Insurance really help? In reality, your average “layperson” these days is more worried about fending off cyber-hackers than your typical street-level pickpockets. Insurance companies are capitalizing on these fears by pitching the digital-age equivalent of a can of mace – the “Identity Theft Protection Insurance. But before buying such protection, experts are already warning consumers that you should find out what that particular policy covers. 

Experts say when your car is involved in an accident or your house accidentally catches on fire, car insurance and homeowners insurance covers the repairs. When an online fraudster drains your bank account or steals your employment identity records, Identity Theft Protection Insurance doesn’t replenish the money of your bank account that got stolen – your bank’s zero liability policies should take care of that. Nor can some variations of Identity Theft Protection Insurance – advertized as credit monitoring and protection services – actually insulate your reputation from a catastrophic hack. 

In actuality, purchasing an Identity Theft Protection Insurance policy is like hiring a wedding planner. You can pay someone to call florists and caterers and in the case of a hacked bank account – contact your bank to cancel a card or do it personally yourself. In truth, Identity Theft Protection Insurance policies are like “expense reimbursement programs” for your hacked bank account than a typical old-fashioned insurance policy.