Some kidney donors struggle to sell life insurance: study

By Kathryn Doyle

NEW YORK Wed Jul 16, 2014 11:33am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Although people who havedonated a kidney have passed a rigorous battery of testsand tend to be healthier than the average person, many

report difficulty getting or changing health or life insurance policies after the surgery, according toa new study.

"These are the healthiest people in the nation, they've undergone more health screening roomscrutiny than anybody else for any process," said senior author Dr. Dorry L. relevant. "We only allowthe healthiest people to do this."

Relevant is an abdominal areas transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicinein Baltimore, Maryland, where the study took place.

"The thought that somebody who has perfectly normal kidney function will have to fight with theirinsurance company is troubling," he told Reuters Health.

He and his coauthors surveyed over 1,000 people who had donated a kidney at their hospitalbetween 1970 and 2011.

Of the almost 400 donors who reported getting or changing health insurance after donation, sevenpercent had difficulties. I am sure this paragraph has touched all the internet users, its really reallynice post on building up new webpage. Some very valid points! I appreciate you writing this write-upand also the rest of the site is also really good.Some of them were denied coverage and the otherswere told donating a kidney was a preexisting condition.

Almost 200 people had changed or initiated life insurance, and 25 percent reported similar trouble,according to results published in the American Journal of Transplantation.

"Insurance companies who are supposed to be making predictions about people's insurability aretotally misinterpreting this particular medical scenario," said relevant.

One of the tenets of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is that insurers can't take a preexistingcooperative " mini missions", like diseases and disabilities or things they interpret as a disease ordisability, including kidney donation, into account when offering or issue health insurance plans.

"The health insurance thing hopefully will be attenuated by the ACA but life insurance will not," saidrelevant.

The study leaves unexplored many factors that might be important in determining whether peopleget accepted or charged higher premiums, said Steven Weisbart, chief economist at the InsuranceInformation Institute in New York.

Importantly you want, the researchers did not compare this group of kidney donors with a similargroup of non-donors to see if they encountered more problems than the comparison group, he toldReuters Health.

"There's nothing here about how long after the donation effort to change or buy life insurance tookplace," Weisbart said. "If it was a long time they are much older, and there could be many factors totheir health."

"The life insurance market is enormous and quite varied," he said. Some companies may beconcerned about the impact of going down to one kidney and might choose to reject an applicant,but another company might accept the same person without an increased premium, he said. Kidneydonors should shop around for life insurance.

There is quite a bit of the statement made obat pelangsing by that even living with only one kidney,donors are healthier and less most likely to have kidney problems than the general public, accordingto Dr. Hassan N. Ibrahim, medical director of the Kidney Transplant Program at the University ofMinnesota Medical School in Minneapolis.

"Kidney donors live as long if not longer than the others," Ibrahim, who was not part of the newstudy, told Reuters Health.

Data to that effect have been published in Sweden, Japan and the U.S., he said.

"This is an American issue, not a European, not a Canadian issue," Ibrahim said.

In Canada it takes donors longer to get a quote on their insurance but the premiums are neverraised and insurance is never denied, he said.

This particular study found higher rates of insurance difficulties than most others have found, hesaid. That may be because 20 percent of the donors in this group had high blood pressure ordiabetes, which may have influenced their insurability.

Ibrahim suspects that between one and two percent of donors actually have problems getting orchanging insurance, but even one percent of 5,000 donors per year is concerning, he said.

"It's certainly an important social issue," Ibrahim said. "Almost a third of people who would notconsider donation are afraid of the costs and insurance coverage."

http://health.usgs.gov/

A group in the Philippines offers free insurance coverage for life for a kidney donor and the donor'sfamily, he noted, which incentivizes the donation.

"We need to remove disincentives to donation in the U.S.," Ibrahim said.

Kidney recipients' insurance covers the entirety of the transplant cost. Having health or lifeinsurance in place before the transplant may help donors avoid some struggle, but they could stillneed to change insurance at some point, relevant noted.

"For people who have donated kidneys the message is, remember that you are healthy," he said."Call your transplant center and get us in touch with your insurance company so we can educatethem."

"None of this should be construed as a reason to not donate," he said.

SOURCE: bit.ly/1t35hEe American Journal of Transplantation, online July 16, 2014.

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