Usual disclaimer. I am not a financial adviser. Go find someone who is qualified AND ETHICAL to take advice from.
This is just something that stays on my radar after setting up insurances for the first time, making mistakes, and realising how dodgy insurance can be.
In case you’ve been living under a particularly sexy rock, you might have noticed a mere global pandemic called COVID-19. Well, turns out insurers want to keep their hands on money instead of covering people. I know, who would have thought?!
Hey Insurance, This Is Why No One Likes You
The thing is (#NotAScientist) that this is a new virus and that the downside to peer-reviewed science is that it’s kinda slow. Which seems to by why insurers are making up* things about who to cover. Why am I saying they are making things up? Well, see below…
*Yes, insurers use statistics. But a) statistics can be twisted to imply what you want which means b) I don’t trust their use in a commercial enterprise and c) I have undergrad in anthropology and postgrad in sociology so I am strongly biased towards qualitative data.
Asthma
However, at this stage, there’s no evidence to indicate that people with asthma — even those with severe asthma — are more prone than others to becoming seriously ill with a COVID-19 infection, said Jo Douglass, an asthma and allergy expert from the University of Melbourne and the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Last month, TAL said it had added the exclusion clause to a “very small number” of new policies and it could be applied to more customers who had “recently travelled abroad, or are showing symptoms of COVID-19, or are in high-risk groups”.
It is understood the high-risk groups affected included doctors who could be exposed to the virus, as well as people aged over 50, asthmatics, smokers and people with other pre-existing respiratory illnesses.
So if there’s no evidence (partially because science takes time), then I think it’s quite reasonable to say insurers are making stuff up.
This is an infuriating example of why half the time I feel like I wasted my time getting insurances set up. I have zero faith that if I ever needed them, that they would pay out. But I also feel that in my personal situation (sole income earner) it’s too risky to not have them.
There’s no real point to this post. I have no question to ask. I don’t expect feedback. I just read those two articles and the stupidity combined with my “am I wasting money having insurance” blew up into an irritation point.