CRAIG REUCASSEL:
Well, for this week’s group assignment we have been looking at insurance premiums, and until this week insurance companies could access genetic testing and look at your chances of inheriting a serious disease to decide whether or not they would insure you. The federal government has said they will ban this practice after research showed Australians are refusing to get tested because they fear their life insurance premiums will go up. Stephen Jones is the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, and he joins us this morning. Morning, Minister.
STEPHEN JONES:
Good morning, good to be back with you, Craig.
REUCASSEL:
So what prompted you to look at this issue, did you get a lot of complaints from the public?
JONES:
Basically the evidence – there’s been a really comprehensive study done by Dr Jane Tiller at Monash University, who’s a researcher in this area, and what she discovered was that people were deciding not to get genetic tests even when they were recommended by their medical practitioner because they were concerned that it was going to affect their access to financial products, including life insurance. Frankly, when I’m asked why have we moved to do this, based on the evidence, we want Australians to be able to follow the medical advice that their doctors give them. If they need to get a genetic test which will prove or disprove whether they’ve got inheritable conditions, whether they’ve the genes which have the predisposition for them to get certain sorts of cancers or other health concerns, we want them to do that so that they can have the health interventions, the medicines and the treatments that they need, and we want to remove any obstacle such as fear of being discriminated against which would stop them having those tests.
REUCASSEL:
Yeah, I mean one of your colleagues actually, Labor MP Julian Hill, it led to a situation where he was told not to get tested for a blood mutation by his doctor because he said it would increase his insurance premium. So it was leading to even a doctor saying, ‘Hang on, don’t get this test’.
JONES:
Yes, interesting when you lift the stone on this. I’ve spoken to probably half a dozen of my colleagues who said, ‘Yep, we’ve got real life experience of this, a sister, a daughter, a friend’. So it was much more pervasive than I originally thought I’ve got to say. Most people’s experience with life insurance, they’ll have a group product through their superannuation fund, but of course there’s lots of people in small business or self‑employed or people wanting income protection insurance and other forms of life insurance that we don’t normally think of that might be affected by this practice. I’ve got to say, credit to the life insurers. They were a bit resistant at first, but they’ve come on board and said that, you know, they can understand the public and community interest in removing any obstacles to people getting the tests and the treatment that they need.
REUCASSEL:
So the life insurance companies have agreed to go along with this legislation. When is it actually going to be passed through parliament? When are we going to see this come into effect?
JONES:
Yeah, good question, Craig. I want to get it done in this term, so we’ve got a pretty rammed legislative agenda between now and the next election, less than 6 weeks left in this year alone.
REUCASSEL:
Is there any opposition to this from the Opposition or the crossbench, or does this seem like it should get –
JONES:
I wouldn’t have thought –
REUCASSEL:
– the support?
JONES:
No, no, it’s something that I hope would get, you know, universal support from the crossbench. I’ve seen people like Senator David Pocock out there championing this issue, Monique Ryan, a former medical practitioner herself. In fact most of the medical practitioners in parliament, Mike Freelander’s been really strong on this one as well. So a bunch of people are campaigning to have us make these changes, so I don’t see any obstacle in terms of a political opposition to it. We’ve just got to get the job done.
REUCASSEL:
And so what were the kinds of, you know, diseases that were being picked up by these tests that were then being refused to be insured by health insurance – by life insurance companies?
JONES:
Well I was joined yesterday by the most wonderful young woman, Cara Ryan, who was involved in a broad‑based genetic test through a university trial and that popped up the fact that she’d had the BRCA B gene, which your listeners will probably know better than I do means you’ve got a greater than average likelihood to develop types of breast cancer. And she told the story about how that had affected her ability to make some changes that she’s planning on making to life insurance and superannuation arrangements. You know, that’s not a stress that you need when you’re trying to work on other health things that you’ve got to deal with. You don’t want to have to be worried about the money and the insurance side of things.
REUCASSEL:
As you pointed out, like a lot of people would have their life insurance through a superannuation. Does superannuation life insurance not test for this kind of stuff and not look at your DNA and, you know, anything you might have in your conditions?
JONES:
No, it doesn’t. It’s what we call group insurance, which means the superannuation on behalf of its fund members just purchases a broad, you might call it a generic policy. Basic cover which covers everyone who doesn’t opt out of it in that fund. It’s not a bespoke product. It’s generally, you know, it’s good cover but it might not be as good a cover as you can get if you top it up inside your super fund or go and get privately written insurance cover.
REUCASSEL:
Yeah.
JONES:
So it’s a good generic product but doesn’t meet everyone’s needs.
REUCASSEL:
All right. So if you’re going for a specific bit of life insurance, keep an eye out for this legislation passing parliament and that will change the limits that insurers can actually have. Thanks for speaking to us, Minister.
JONES:
Good to be with you.
REUCASSEL:
Stephen Jones there, the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services. It is 7:26 on ABC Radio Sydney.