Victims of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases have won an important High Court victory against insurers.

In years past, insurers would pay compensation for mesothelioma victims on the presumption that their liability arose at the time when a worker was actually exposed to asbestos. However, two years ago, the Court of Appeal ruled that the victims’ liability occurred when the disease actually developed – which can take 40 years or more - rather than at the time of exposure. As a result, insurers stopped paying on a "time of exposure" basis and argued they were not liable because the risk cover they provided 40 years ago was no longer in force. 

This summer a 9 week legal battle ensued where Colin Wynter QC, argued for three families battling insurers to recover compensation for asbestos exposure. “It cannot be right to say that a man injured today is not actually injured until tomorrow." said Wynter. Wynter also represented employers who would face the threat of compensation claims against them for asbestos exposure if their insurers did not apply compensation at the time of exposure.

The judge ruled on six test cases saying, that the workers can make claims against their employers’ historic insurers despite the fact that there is no proof of when the life threatening tumors develop. He said: "For the purposes of these policies, injury is sustained when it is caused and disease is contracted when it is caused, and the policies fall to be so construed."

In the United Kingdom, a proposed law may affect workers' ability to receive compensation for industrial illnesses such as mesothelioma.

Currently, insurance liability forms must be retained on record for forty years.  A new proposition suggests removing this requirement.  Employees who face work-related illnesses may not be able to obtain liability records and will therefore be ineligible for compensation.

According to the president of the Association of Personal Injury lawyers, "Repeal of this regulation means that highly vulnerable people could be left without the means to obtain the compensation they need, and to which they are entitled."

A widow of a mesothelioma victim presented this argument: “[My husband] died without compensation because his employer’s insurance policies were not retained and his employer had ceased trading. For the Government to remove the duty on employers to retain insurance policies for 40 years is an insult to my late husband and to hundreds of asbestos victims and their families who have lost compensation. It is a disgrace.”

To read more about the proposed law, click here.

Recently, insurance actuarial firms have estimated that the cost of asbestos claims will explode in coming years.  Currently, outlays for asbestos claims total $54 billion, and some firms predict it to reach as high as $275 billion, according to an article in the Ann Arbor Business Review.

Because the latency period of mesothelioma can be up to 50 years, it is expected that asbestos-related disease claims will continue to rise until 2018, when it will make a steady plateau.  The height of asbestos use in America came during the late '70s, so many victims have yet to be diagnosed with asbestos complications.  "There are 10,000 deaths a year and that number will climb," said Dr. Michael R. Harbut, co-director, National Center for Vermiculite and Asbestos-Related Cancers.

The cost of cancer care is rising fifteen percent a year, according to a recent MSNBC article. 

The price tag on cancer treatment is sending many patients, families, and even doctors into sticker shock.  Price of cancer treatment, primarily chemotherapy drugs, is now weighing heavily on patients' choice of care.  For example, two equally effective colon cancer drugs cost a difference of $60,000; whereas the cheaper causes hair loss, the more expensive can lead to nerve damage in hands.  According to many doctors, price is now considered a side-effect of drugs: when selecting treatments, patients consider the cost just as they would nausea, hair loss, and nerve damage, for example.   Dr. Neal J. Meropol of Philadelphia’s Fox Chase Cancer Center says he has seen patients calculate costs, such as a colon cancer patient who asked to switch from oral chemo to cheaper but more laborious intravenous chemo, or a woman who refused a pricey anti-nausea drug that would make her chemo more bearable.

The only up-side of rising cancer costs is drug companies' ability to donate medication to prescription-assistance programs that provide them for free to patients who otherwise couldn’t pay.  Programs like “Partnership for Prescription Assistance" have assisted about 5 million people since 2005 in obtaining costly care.

Prices are typically omitted from drug fact sheets, so doctors are sometimes unaware of the costs to patients. But because of the rising prices, doctors are now being trained in how to approach the matter of price with patients.