Well, here we are again. It’s time to discuss our favorite topic; insurance. Okay, honestly, it’s not our favorite topic. To most people, dealing with insurance is like going to the dentist. Although no one wants to talk about it, insurance is a vital element of financial stability and crisis management.

Another topic that no one wants to talk about is HIV. HIV is like the bad word of health conditions. Now, I have been asked to discuss both of these topics in one post. Somebody somewhere loves me, or maybe not.

The research and subsequent data on HIV has moved us light years from where we began when the disease first surfaced in America. There was a time when those who were diagnosed with HIV could not get life insurance. Those days are a thing of the past.

HIV is a term that will make you think. I cannot remember anything that struck fear into people like HIV. I remember in the late 1980’s and the early 90’ when the HIV/AIDS scare was in full swing. Here I was with my analytical mindset. HIV had become so significant that it had replaced my continuous obsession with the person that keeps setting the brush fires in California. If this is your first time reading my posts, you are probably wondering what in the world that is all about. I have this theory that all of the annual brush fires in the state of California is the work of one man. That is another story for another time. The important thing is the HIV epidemic had my attention.

I was so consumed with the growing numbers that I had become an HIV actuary. That’s right I was crunching HIV numbers like they were going out of style. I had convinced myself that I could predict who would become infected with 98.9 percent accuracy. My prediction ratio would have been higher, but he CDC (The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention [somebody please tell me how you get all of that out of a three letter acronym]) kept switching up the criteria.

During that time, there were a lot of people that were wondering why I was giving them the side eye. Little did they know that I had crunched the numbers and the outlook was looking pretty bleak for them. The truth of the matter was that there were certain people that were a part of a certain high risk group and there were others that were a part of multiple high risk groups, yet they escaped that era unscathed. On the other h and, there were those that did not meet any of the high risk criteria that contracted the disease. It simply serves to show that life and death moves on their own accord and they play by their own set of rules. We can take all type of precautions and measures, but we have very little say in the end.

As research caught up with the panic and people realized that HIV was not a death sentence, it changed the l andscape of the American culture on so many fronts. People became more tolerable of those who were HIV positive. Insurance companies offered life insurance policies to those who contracted the disease. Most of all, my family’s toleration of me increased.

Update: Life Insurance now available for HIV+ people living with HIV – https://lifeinsurance.rocks/life-insurance-for-people-living-with-hiv-2/