Insurance companies cannot charge unfairly discriminatory life-insurance premiums or refuse coverage because of severe disability or sickle cell trait, with limited rate-setting and exclusion exceptions.
§1097. Discrimination in rates or failure to provide coverage because of severe disability or sickle cell trait prohibited A. No insurance company shall charge unfair discriminatory premiums, policy fees, or rates for, or refuse to provide any policy or contract of life insurance, life annuity, or policy containing disability coverage for a person solely because the applicant therefor has a severe disability, unless the rate differential is based on sound actuarial principles or is related to actual experience. No insurance company shall unfairly discriminate in the payments of dividends, other benefits payable under a policy, or in any of the terms and conditions of such policy or contract solely because the owner of the policy or contract has a severe disability. B. As used in this Section, "severe disability" means any disease of, or injury to, the spinal cord resulting in permanent and total disability, amputation of any extremity that requires prosthesis, permanent visual acuity of twenty/two hundred or worse in the better eye with the best correction, a peripheral field so contracted that the widest diameter of such field subtends an angular distance no greater than twenty degrees, total deafness, inability to hear a normal conversation or use a telephone without the aid of an assistive device, or any developmental disability, including but not limited to autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, intellectual disabilities, and other neurological impairments. C. No insurance company shall charge unfair discriminatory premiums, policy fees, or rates for, or refuse to provide any policy, subscriber agreement, or contract of life insurance, life annuity, or policy containing disability coverage for a person solely because the applicant therefor has sickle cell trait. No insurance company shall unfairly discriminate in the payments of dividends, other benefits payable under a policy, or in any of the terms and conditions of such policy or contract solely because the insured of the policy or contract has sickle cell trait. Nothing in this Subsection shall prohibit waiting periods, pre-existing conditions, or dreaded disease rider exclusions, or any combination thereof, as may be permitted by federal law. Added by Acts 1981, No. 766, §1. Amended by Acts 1982, No. 643, §1; Redesignated from R.S. 22:652.1 by Acts 2008, No. 415, §1, eff. Jan. 1, 2009; Acts 2014, No. 718, §1, eff. June 18, 2014; Acts 2014, No. 811, §11, eff. June 23, 2014.