Health Service Record Confidentiality

[Brian Morrison]

On Mon, 24 Feb 2014 09:17:32 +0000
Peter Mitchell wrote:

> ... a report by a major UK insurance society discloses that it was
> able to obtain 13 years of hospital data – covering 47 million
> patients – in order to help companies “refine” their premiums.

I can see why they would want this, their actuaries will be using the
complete distribution to apportion average risk for each centile or
decile of the population and more accurate data should improve their
modelling. The problem comes if they are able to use an individual's
data to unfairly load their premiums or refuse cover for a future, as
yet not experienced, condition.

I suppose that it would also be unfair to cover someone with a very low
risk for a very low premium but I can't see many insurers taking that
route.

-- 

Brian Morrison