The right to conceal one’s medical history
Voted on January 26, 2016, as part of the health system modernization law, the right to be forgotten allows recovered patients to no longer declare their illness to their insurer as part of a loan to buy a home or finance a business. An essential device to guarantee patients that their life goes on after cancer.
The maximum time limit is set at 10 years after the end of treatment. This period is reduced to 5 years for cancers declared before the age of 21. For some cancers, these periods can be reduced to 8 or 3 years. A reference grid lists these pathologies (March 2021).
“Ten years is far too long!”
“It is clear today that the AERAS agreement (which aims to improve access to credit for people who are sick or who have been, editor’s note) has reached its limits”, indicates the RoseUp association in a press release published in October 2021 (source 1).
“Ten years is much too long to resume the normal course of one’s life when one is cured !”, insists the association which has been campaigning for several months for a right to be forgotten at 5 years for all and for the abolition of medical questionnaires.
What could change?
On Wednesday, January 26, the Senate adopted an amendment aimed at:
- at enshrine directly in the law the reduction of the period of the “right to be forgotten” from ten to five years for cancer,
- at extend this “right to be forgotten” to chronic pathologies
- and to abolish the borrowing ceiling for people benefiting from the AERAS agreement (Insuring and Borrowing with an Aggravated Health Risk).
The senators also planned to remove the medical questionnaire for home loans of less than 350,000 euros which expire before the borrower’s 65th birthday.
“Yesterday, the Senate heard us. It’s a first step, but nothing is won yet. It now remains to convince the deputies in view of the examination of the text in a joint joint committee on Thursday February 3″, underlines however the association (source 2).
