In the currently raging controversy on health care, we hear all the time of people who had insurance, but got dropped when they got too sick. Or they might have been accepted in good faith, but then rejected in the pinch because they “should have known” that they suffered from some as yet undiagnosed preexisting condition.
Many also argue that our system is overly focused on “sick care” rather than prevention and wellness. Useful preventive procedures are often not covered by insurance or are otherwise unavailable to people of limited means.
It occurs to me that if the same entity insured your life as well as your health, we’d see then how eager they are to cut off the health care. I think we’d see a slight change in attitude there. “Health” is, after all, a core aspect of “life”, and, in fact, it was traditional in the insurance industry that health and life insurers were the same companies. This was so much true that many of the same laws applied to both types of insurance, life and health being the one of the two main divisions into which insurance was divided, the other being property and casualty. (I suppose surety and bonding constituted a third category, but it’s been a long time since I was a professional reader of insurance law).
Has anything like this ever been considered? Are life and health insurance mutually antagonistic by principle? I can see how there might be some problems around the edges; a person of mediocre or poor health, would be rated way up on the life portion of a dual policy, but they might well consider ample health coverage a fair trade-off. But in general, would such an idea be feasible? (Paging Cunctator)