On a Plan for making Conditional the Payment of extra Premium in the case of a Life supposed to be Diseased or more than ordinarily Hazardous

Extract

The difficulty of dealing equitably with assurers whose prospects of longevity are considered by the medical referee to be below the average of healthy lives of the same age will not, I think, be disputed. The practice of charging a higher premium corresponding to an advanced age, which has hitherto generally been adopted, is, of course, open to the double objection, that the judgment of the medical officer may have been at fault in placing the life in the second or third class at all, and, supposing he were right in his decision thus far, that the premium at which he has assessed the risk may not be in accordance with its precise magnitude. It is true that in after years reductions may be made if the person's health improve; but this plan is not without trouble both to the Office and the assured, and it has the further disadvantage of leaving the latter in a state of uncertainty as to what his future premiums may be.