Ever since I was at secondary school, I’ve been able to see both sides of a situation. It’s great in the sense that I tend to go into any decision I make with my eyes wide open, aware of all the pros and cons.
But the drawback is that it can take me ages to get to that point. I can find myself caught up in endless detail, seeing things from one perspective that shifts and gives way to the opposite point of view.
Then, just as I think I’ve cracked it, I have a last-minute wobble. That’s when I go around asking my family and friends what they think.
Sometimes making my mind up is like one of those internet illusions. You know the ones – does this silhouette depict a woman’s face or a flower? Are these trainers pink or green?
I’ll usually see one image, then the flip side pretty quickly. But once you see both sides, you can’t pretend one of them doesn’t exist. That makes it difficult for me to come down on one side or the other – there’s always a ‘but’ around the corner.
There are times when this has served me well. In my English language GCSE paper, I was given a poem that I’d never read before. I think it was called something like Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. It was about the narrator bumping into an old school friend years down the line while on the bus. The narrator had stayed on at school, been to college and was building a career.
In contrast, her classmate had left school and had children. She was pushing a pram, surrounded by a gaggle of young children. The question the 1990s exam board decided to put to us was who had been more successful in life, the narrator or her classmate?
Even at the age of 16, the implications of that question made me uneasy. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but I could see that motherhood was being pitched against a career as a valid choice for women and I wasn’t going to play judge and jury.
So, I went on to write about how both women were successful in different ways because you couldn’t compare educational and professional success with bringing the next generation into the world. It got me full marks.
A freelance article I recently wrote for Protection Guru reminded me how difficult I can find it to form an opinion on emotive subjects. I was looking at whether cancer survivors in the UK should have the ‘right to be forgotten’ when applying for insurance.
In other words, if they have been cancer-free for a certain period – usually between five and 10 years – should they still have to disclose their previous cancer diagnosis, which then puts them at risk of being rejected, offered cover with exclusions or having to pay higher premiums?
This is a big talking point in the EU because it’s part of the European Commission’s Beating Cancer Plan. Given that the UK is no longer in the EU, it doesn’t impact us directly. But I think its naïve to think we’re immune to what’s happening globally, as UK governments can draw inspiration or face pressure from policy changes elsewhere in the world.
While researching my article, a name that kept cropping up was Professor Mark Lawler, professor of digital health at Queen’s University Belfast.
Last year, Professor Lawler published a study in The Lancet Oncology showing that up to 25% of cancer survivors in Europe can’t access financial products such as life insurance and mortgages. In the UK, Professor Lawler believes at least half a million cancer survivors could be experiencing some form of financial discrimination due to a previous cancer diagnosis.
If that is the case, my gut reaction is that it’s not acceptable. It’s heartbreaking to think that people who have been through so much are penalised years later through no fault of their own.
To paraphrase Professor Lawler, if doctors have given someone the all clear from cancer, how can insurers – who are not medical experts – argue with that? Surely medical opinion is enough to prove to insurers that someone is no longer the high risk that they were and that a premium increase of up to 400% on life insurance is not justifiable?
Most recently, Professor Lawler has been highlighting how people in Northern Ireland who had childhood cancers are being denied mortgages in their 30s. So, it’s not just about paying more to get insurance; it’s also stopping cancer survivors from moving on with their lives – which just isn’t right.
But, as I head towards my 25th year as a personal finance journalist and knowing how the financial services industry works, I can’t help seeing the other side of it.
That doesn’t mean I like it and agree with it, but insurers and mortgage providers do need to price risk properly and balance their exposure across the risk spectrum, otherwise the whole thing falls apart.
As I said in my article, Macmillan Cancer Support’s ‘Cured – but at what cost?’ report says one in four people face poor health or disability after their cancer treatment has ended. Cancer survivors can be more susceptible to other conditions like heart problems, so I wonder how firms could get the pricing right if they didn’t know the history.
It’s easy to point the finger at firms who seem to be profiting at the expense of cancer survivors. But if they don’t make a profit and they end up going out of business, would anyone really be better off? Some say the right to be forgotten would not hit insurers this hard – so perhaps we should try it.
Then again, medical underwriting may not be perfect – but is it the best way we have to balance the interests of cancer survivors with those of the insurers?
