New York To Investigate Insurance Bias Against Gay Men After Bombshell News Report

New York state monetary regulators say they plan to research claims that homosexual males had been denied lifestyles, incapacity and long-term care insurance coverage insurance policies after revealing they had been taking HIV prevention medicine. 

Maria T. Vullo, the state’s superintendent of economic products and services, instructed The New York Times final week that businesses making such denials may well be penalized for illegally discriminating in opposition to the ones purchasers. 

The announcement adopted a Feb. 12 New York Times article wherein journalist Donald G. McNeil spoke with Dr. Philip J. Cheng, who had begun taking Truvada for pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP ― an HIV prevention drug ― after injuring himself whilst prepping an HIV-positive affected person for surgical procedure. 

Cheng, who’s homosexual, later tried to use for a incapacity insurance plans, and stated he was once instructed that he may handiest have a five-year coverage as a result of he was once on PrEP. 

McNeil additionally interviewed LGBTQ rights advocates, insurance coverage agents and workforce at clinical clinics, who stated they’d heard of quite a lot of insurers who had denied insurance policies to homosexual males after finding out they took PrEP. Some males, they stated, even stopped taking the drugs to get insured. 

“This is tantamount to penalizing applicants based on sexual orientation,” Vullo stated on Feb. 14. She inspired any New York citizens who consider that they had been denied protection on the ones grounds to touch her company, including, “Insurers cannot choose to deny coverage based on discriminatory reasons.”

Though Vullo wasn’t positive if different states would practice swimsuit, she believed that California regulators “will be aligned with me on this issue,” consistent with the Times. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the usage of PrEP each day can scale back the danger of contracting HIV from intercourse by way of greater than 90 p.c. 

Still, the drug has remained a lightning rod for controversy, in all probability as a result of folks affiliate its use with homosexual and bisexual males, who stay disproportionately inclined to HIV an infection. 

Last month, Florida-based grocery store chain Publix confronted public backlash for reportedly refusing to hide PrEP for an worker thru its insurance coverage plan. By Feb. 6, Publix ― which operates 1,169 retail outlets in seven Southern states ― modified its track after a gathering with Florida Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D).

Smith, who’s overtly homosexual, stated Publix officers showed to him that they had been “absolutely denying” insurance plans for PrEP, partially as a result of medicine used “to treat a medical condition that someone might get in the future” was once now not coated of their present plan.

An afternoon after the assembly with Smith, a Publix consultant tweeted that the corporate had “made the decision to expand our health plan’s coverage” to incorporate PrEP, and was once “working with our pharmacy benefits manager to implement this change as quickly as possible.”