The Federal Center for Health Care Expertise (KCE) proposes to relax the conditions of the right to be forgotten enjoyed by insurance companies for people who have suffered from breast cancer in the past. Certain waiting times before being able to be insured should be shortened from 10 to one year, he argues in a report published on Tuesday.
A more flexible right to be forgotten after breast cancer. This is what the Federal Center for Healthcare Expertise (KCE) offers. This concerns insurance: companies are used to finding out about the state of health of their client before granting outstanding insurance for a mortgage or professional contract. If the fears are too great (and therefore on its ability to repay all of its loan), the contract may be refused.
KCE wants to drop all waiting times for people with breast cancer
The law of April 4, 2019, however, guarantees a right to be forgotten: people declared cured for at least 10 years from cancer are exempt from additional premium for their outstanding balance insurance. This right could therefore be relaxed for people who have suffered from breast cancer, as provided for by the law, which requires regular reassessment, in view of progress in medicine. In the case of breast cancer, a one-year waiting period is currently provided after the end of treatment for an “in situ” cancer (when the tumor is limited to the tissue where it originated) and a 10 years for all other stadiums.
In collaboration with the Cancer Registry Foundation, the KCE has analyzed Belgian data on breast cancer since 2007. No excess mortality was observed up to 14 years after the date of diagnosis for “in situ” cancers, notes he. The federal center therefore recommends abandoning any waiting period for people with this type of cancer.
For other cancers, the KCE recommends using the date of diagnosis instead of the end of treatment date
For cancers spreading to other tissues, but which nevertheless remain small or have been detected at an early stage, the KCE proposes to consider a waiting period of one year, instead of the current 10 years. In addition, the KCE considers that the waiting period should be counted from the date of diagnosis, which is more precise, rather than that of the end of treatment, as is currently the case.. “As the survival rate of these people approaches that of the rest of the population, there is no reason to continue to impose special conditions on them when taking out debt balance insurance”underlines the KCE.
This revision would affect approximately 1 in 2 women diagnosed with breast cancer. These proposals were forwarded to the Outstanding Balance Insurance Pricing Monitoring Office. The latter must then send them, together with his own opinion, to the Secretary of State for Consumer Protection, Eva De Bleeker, to the Minister of Social Affairs Frank Vandenbroucke and to the Minister of the Economy Pierre-Yves Dermagne.
12 other pathologies will be analyzed by the KCE
These three firms will ultimately decide whether or not to act on these changes. After breast cancer, the KCE will study the right to be forgotten for people who have developed type 1 diabetes, thyroid cancer, stage I melanoma or contracted HIV. A total of 12 pathologies were selected and ranked in order of priority.