AIDS and the Legislature

The Assembly Ways and Means Committee has approved legislation allowing testing for AIDS as a condition for obtaining individual health and life insurance. The two bills have been sent to the floor for action. Legislators will be well advised to proceed with caution.

We have no disagreement with AB 3305, which would allow AIDS testing as a condition for issuing life insurance. The existing prohibition of such testing places in jeopardy the whole structure of life insurance in the state because of the undoubted actuarial implications for anyone who tests positive to the human immunodeficiency virus.

But that is not the case with health insurance. Persons can test positive to the AIDS virus and remain asymptomatic for seven or more years. To approve AB 2900 is to invite the health-insurance companies to dump thousands of people from their rolls. One element of the measure would help reduce its negative consequences, making implementation contingent on the passage of AB 600, which would establish health-insurance risk pools for those otherwise unable to obtain health insurance. That availability of risk-pool health insurance would be a welcome development. But, in the case of AIDS, it would be forcing many people, not now generating increased health-care costs, to pay as much as 125% of present premiums with the possibility of reduced protection. The result would be a huge increase in the numbers of uninsured or those dependent on the already strained services of Medi-Cal. And, to make matters worse, there are moves within the Legislature to separate the two bills--a maneuver that would enormously compound the negative effect of allowing this testing.

The insurance companies have mounted an aggressive advertising campaign to give them the right to break California’s carefully constructed limits on AIDS testing. They can make a persuasive case when it comes to life insurance. They have failed to make a persuasive case for health insurance. The state can only wish that the insurers had diverted some of their energy from this propaganda campaign to devising better means of insuring against the costs of AIDS.

These insurance bills are among many AIDS bills coming up for action this week. Some of the bills have great merit--among them AB 3795 legislating against discrimination, a prime recommendation of the Presidential AIDS Commission, and two others, AB 3750 and AB 4438, that would permit the sharing of AIDS test results among health-care providers as necessary, but that would also prohibit refusing health care to persons with AIDS. Also pending final action is AIDS education legislation that would mandate instruction in the public schools but leave the curriculum to local school boards while allowing parents to veto participation by their children.