According to the British Lung Foundation (BLF) the UK is losing 25 million working days per year du...
According to the British Lung Foundation (BLF) the UK is losing 25 million working days per year due to lung disease. It calculates this as an annual cost to industry of £1.5bn and says the Government cannot afford to ignore the impact of lung disease and that it was putting an 'enormous strain' on GP services.
However, while the disease is becoming a significant cause of workplace absence, IP providers are not being hit by the problem.
The nature of lung disease means that this financial cost is being borne by employers rather than insurers.
Nick Homer, income protection marketing manager at Norwich Union, said: 'Respiratory disease has been fairly steady over recent years as approximately the tenth major cause of claim at just under the 2% mark. The most obvious reason is that most workforce sickness is short term and most respiratory conditions are also short term. In reality this is not likely to impact on income protection policies where not many deferred periods are less than 13 weeks.'
The bulk of deferred periods are at 13, 26 or 52 weeks, either for cost reasons, or to tie-in with the employers sick pay arrangements. The fastest growing reason to claim in the last five to 10 years has been mental illness.
Homer said: 'Ten years ago mental illness would not even have been on the radar, but for some insurers it is now a major cause of claim.'
Those who take time off work due to respiratory problems are more likely to be women than men ' taking 16 days compared with 12.5 days. Workers in the South West take the least time off and public and service sector jobs take more time than manual and construction workers.
Dame Helena Shovelton, BLF's chief executive, said: 'We have to put more resources into preventing and treating lung diseases. Lung disease has so often been the poor relation in terms of health spending and we are now paying the price.'
