AIDS testing violations draw fines for company > Horace Mann Companies fined $15,750

AUGUSTA — An Illinois-based life insurance company has paid fines totaling $15,750 for violations of Maine’s AIDS testing and counseling law, officials said Wednesday.

A Maine Insurance Bureau investigation showed the Horace Mann Companies tested 105 applicants for acquired immune deficiency syndrome without obtaining appropriate written consent or offering required pre- and post-test counseling, said Insurance Superintendent Joseph A. Edwards.

The violations were uncovered through an ongoing review of insurer compliance with the 15-month-old law. It requires agents to read aloud the informed-consent form that applicants must sign, advising them how tests will be conducted and what will be done with the results, and requires insurers to contribute up to $30 per session for the counseling, bureau officials said.

“Companies are allowed to test for AIDS so long as they comply with the specific requirements of Maine law and the Bureau of Insurance regulations,” Edwards said in a prepared statement.

“We certainly intend to enforce the law in order to protect consumers’ rights when they are tested and to ensure that they are offered counseling,” he added.

Leo Lambert, head of the bureau’s Market Conduct Division, said the fines were included in a consent decree resolving the violations.

Before the present testing requirements took effect in May 1989, insurers were not required to verbally inform applicants about AIDS testing, nor were they required to offer counseling. The company had 90 of the applicants sign an obsolete consent form, but Lambert said copies of the new form were mailed out before the law took effect.

“The new forms were sent out months in advance,” he said.

John O’Shea, a spokesman for the Springfield, Ill.-based company, said the firm admitted the violations, which he said resulted from delays in revising the consent forms to comply with the law. He said appropriate forms were approved in mid-December 1989.

“Our company was being sold,” he said. “It was a chaotic time around here.”

Lambert said Horace Mann was the second major insurer to be fined for violations of the AIDS testing law and that several other companies remain under investigation.