Insurers, Consumers, and Testing: The AIDS Experience

Abstract

At the end of 1987, the insurance industry could breathe a sigh of relief. By a combination of good luck, astute planning, and nerve, life and health insurers had managed to impose HIV-testing requirements on insurance applicants while making few concessions to the gay community or insurance regulators. To a greater degree than almost anyone had thought possible, the insurers had deflected most of the expected health costs from the AIDS epidemic onto the nation’s taxpayers, and had taken steps to deny life or health insurance to anyone they considered to be at risk of AIDS.The use of blood tests to determine if an individual is infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS has been a matter of considerable controversy. Yet to date only a handful of states have restricted the use of HIV testing by companies offering life or health insurance.