Establishment of Reinsurance Fund Urged to Ensure Insurance Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities - Opposition Leader Highlights Concerns in Legislative Debate

Government is being urged to establish a reinsurance fund to ensure that persons with disabilities are able to secure insurance when they need it.

Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne made that recommendation yesterday, reminding that under the law insurance companies, or any other entity or individual, had the right not to enter into contracts against their will.

He was speaking in the House of Assembly during debate on the Rights Of Persons With Disabilities Bill, 2024.

Government backbencher Edmund Hinkson, who chaired the Advisory Committee for Improving the Lives of People with Disabilities, called Thorne’s concern legitimate.

However, he suggested that the National Development Fund for persons with disabilities, which is to be established under the new legislation, was a solution to the challenge the Opposition Leader raised.

Thorne noted that Clause 51 (1) of the bill says “that a person with a disability shall not be denied insurance solely on the basis of his disability”.

“Let me analogise with motor vehicle insurance. The law certainly is that third party insurance is compulsory. In other words, if you have a vehicle, you must insure that vehicle against the risk that vehicle may enter into an accident and cause loss to what we call a third party,” he said.

“The law says that you cannot drive a vehicle unless it has at least third party insurance. Now that is nice theory, because there is no law that forces any insurance company to offer insurance to a person. So that if you buy a car and no insurance company trusts you enough to sell you third party insurance, far less comprehensive insurance, you have to catch the bus or drive illegally.”

Thorne said the Rights Of Persons With Disabilities Bill had not gone as far as to compel any insurance company to sell insurance to a disabled person [because] the essence of contract was that it should be voluntary.

“I plead with the Government to consider that reinsurance fund to resolve the issue because, as much as we wish to do in relation to the rights of persons of disability, as much as this legislation wishes to do . . . for persons of disability, it cannot breach that fundamental common law provision that you cannot force persons to enter into a contract. That’s the law,” the Member of Parliament for Christ Church South said.

Hinkson, who spoke immediately after Thorne, suggested that Thorne’s idea “is addressed in Section 80 of the bill . . . whereby a National Development Fund for persons with disabilities is to be established under the act . . . for the benefit of persons with disabilities and their organisations”.