A five-year-old girl has been refused insurance in Sweden because she has serious overweight or obesity
Sweden – A healthy five-year-old girl who had weight no more than 55 pounds (25 kilograms) had been rejected insurance in Sweden, because of her weight had a high-risk category. On Friday, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet declared that Freya recommended body-mass index (BMI) for a girl of her age because had 3′ 11″ tall but insurance giant Folksam had declined to renew her policy.
A letter from Folksam to the girl’s mother named Zarah Samuelsson declared that the reason our decision is she has serious overweight/obesity. Samuelsson, from Orust, an island off the west coast of Sweden, told that she initially thought the rejection was a joke.
“I was angry and shocked because this was totally unreal”, she said. The risk analysis team said that if my daughter’s weight then is the same as it is now, we were allowed to apply for a new insurance policy in a year’s time. Andreas Jerat as head of the information department at Folksam explained that every year the company refused a few cases because of a child’s BMI, but would not give comment on any specific cases.
He also added that we bought the service from an external reinsurance company with experience of risk factors in children and we followed their guidelines. Carl-Erik Flodmark as head of Child Obesity in the southern Swedish city of Malmo gave comment on the decision that if this girl was a borderline case, there was no proof that it posed any potential danger before a child reached the age of 10.
