Combining Life and Health Insurance*
研究发现延长寿命的医疗治疗能降低人寿保险公司的赔付成本并增加保费收入，以免疫疗法为例，估计每年为美国人寿保险业节省98亿美元，并探讨了保险公司如何帮助患者获得治疗。
Abstract We estimate the benefit of life-extending medical treatments to life insurance companies. Our main insight is that life insurance companies have a direct benefit from such treatments because they lower the insurer’s liabilities by pushing the death benefit further into the future and raising future premium income. We apply this insight to immunotherapy, treatments associated with durable gains in survival rates for a growing number of cancer patients. We estimate that the life insurance sector’s aggregate benefit from FDA-approved immunotherapies is $9.8 billion a year. Such life-extending treatments are often prohibitively expensive for patients and governments alike. Exploiting this value creation, we explore various ways life insurers could improve stress-free access to treatment. We discuss potential barriers to integration and the long-run implications for the industrial organization of life and health insurance markets, as well as the broader implications for medical innovation and long-term care insurance markets.