2013 Louisiana Laws
Revised Statutes
TITLE 22 - Insurance
RS 22:1097 - Discrimination in rates or failure to provide coverage because of severe disability or sickle cell trait prohibited

§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. "Severe disability", as used in this Section, 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, or 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 persons who have developmental disabilities, including but not limited to autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, mental retardation, and other neurological impairments.

C. Nothing in this Section shall be construed as requiring an insurance company to provide insurance coverage against a severe disability which the applicant or policyholder has already sustained.

D. 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 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 of 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, if they do not unfairly discriminate.

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.