ABSTRACT
In the late 1980s the insurance industry responded to forecasts of an HIV epidemic by loading the premiums of single men seeking life insurance and by revising their proposal questionnaires to include questions designed to assess the risk of the applicant contracting HIV disease. These measures were justified by appealing to the nature of the insurance industry and warnings from government actuaries of a potential explosion in claims from AIDS-related deaths. The industry argued that it was increasing the premiums of those who were thought at the time to be most at risk, and that it was standard practice to load premiums for high-risk groups and to refuse insurance to applicants likely to make substantial claims in the near future. It would be unacceptable, they argued, to those at low risk (e.g. married couples) to subsidise high-risk groups (e.g. single men). Tales about unscrupulous clients increasing insurance cover after they had found out they were HIV positive were cited as evidence of the need to be vigilant.
