“If I feel discriminated? I cannot do the same as before due to the fact that I had cancerâ€. Maria Noguera, 48, had triple negative breast cancer in 2019. She had just finished paying the mortgage, for which she had taken out life insurance, and she wanted to renew it. She was automatically denied due to the fact that she was undergoing an oncological process. She underwent a year and a half treatment and there is no trace of the tumor. Now she has tried again to contract a life policy, in several companies. Unsuccessfully. The appearance of the word cancer in the medical record implies, with all certainty, an increase in the premium, but on many occasions also the impossibility of accessing financial products. Those affected claim the so-called right to be forgotten oncology so as not to have to carry the artificial sequelae of the disease forever.
“We recently had a meeting in Barcelona and my surprise was to find people who had childhood leukemia, that is, during childhood, and they are being denied a mortgage when they have reached 30 years of age,” exclaims Noguera. Although Spanish law does not require you to take out life insurance to request a loan or a mortgage, there are banks that request or recommend it as a guarantee of payment. The problem arises when the company denies the policy to people with a disease or who have suffered from cancer.
A report from the Josep Carreras Foundation delves into the testimony of 400 young people between the ages of 18 and 35 diagnosed with acute leukemia and lymphomas (between 4,500 and 5,000 cases per year in this age group in Spain), in order to “determine the impact in the lives of patients who manage to get aheadâ€. Nearly half of those surveyed (47%) report difficulties in applying for a loan. 83% state that they have had problems to take out life insurance and 73% to sign a death policy.
“We are facing a paradigm shift,” says Clara Rosà s, manager of the Catalan Federation of Entities against Cancer (Fecec). “Luckily, the survival of women from cancer is 64%, that of men is 56% and more and more people overcome and become chronic with the disease, with which difficulties arise that we did not consider a few years ago â€, he argues: “There is discrimination against people who have had the disease to access financial products because they ask for insurance and what the insurers measure is the risk. They deny it to you or they have to pay you an extra cost â€.
According to Fecec, there are many people who have not been able to access a financial product due to their medical history. The entity claims that updated survival statistics by type of cancer are applied (many people who have the same probability of relapse as others who have not had the disease). On the other hand, he calls for a law on the right to be forgotten that requires the erasure of medical records after a period of time.
A year ago, the European Parliament urged that, before 2025, all countries guarantee the right to be forgotten oncology. “Insurers and banks should not take into account the medical history of people affected by cancer,” says the proposal, which aims to ensure that survivors “are not discriminated against compared to other consumers.” Most Member States have adopted this legal guarantee. France was a pioneer, in 2017, in the recognition of a right that generally benefits patients after 10 years without relapse. This period is reduced to 5 years after completing the therapeutic protocol for cancers diagnosed before 15 years of age. Your conditions of access to loans and insurance are not affected by surcharges or higher interest rates. In addition, the law incorporates a reference table that establishes, disease by disease, the maximum time for people to access these products in the same conditions as those who have not stopped due to cancer.
In Spain, Law 4/2018 prohibits discriminating in contracting insurance against a person for having HIV or other health conditions, although it does not specify what “other health conditions” are. The Junts group in Congress has presented a series of questions to the Government to find out if it plans to promote legal changes to guarantee the right to be forgotten oncology, taking into account that Spain is one of the few EU countries that lacks a “regulation specific to shield access to financial products such as loans, mortgages or insurance for cancer survivorsâ€.
“These people need an answer,” exclaims Junts deputy Pilar Calvo, while waiting for the Government’s position, before the 24th. “There are thousands of people every year who, in addition to overcoming cancer, find it very difficult to resume their lives normally and without discriminationâ€, he adds.
“When it happens to you at 60 or 65 years of age, perhaps the affectation is not so serious because the probability that at that age you will ask for a mortgage is what it is. But for young people the affectation is much more importantâ€, emphasizes Clara Rosà s.
Five years ago, the resident of Elche Juan Antonio Sepulcre, who was 29, collected more than 150,000 signatures with which he was able to reconsider a bank that had denied him a mortgage. In 2008 he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a cancerous bone tumor that usually occurs in adolescents, and which he overcame after about a year of treatment. “As soon as they put the word cancer in life insurance their admissions system denies it,†he said. Without insurance, although the petitioner was completely cured, the financial institution initially refused to give him the loan.
