Prognosis
John Hancock Life Insurance Will Offer Blood Tests to Detect Early Cancer
- John Hancock will subsidize tests, won’t see clients’ results
- Tests detect many early cancers but trials still under way
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Life insurer John Hancock will begin offering thousands of customers access to cancer blood tests made by Illumina Inc.’s Grail unit, betting that early detection of the disease will help them live longer.
About 10,000 eligible customers will receive full or half subsidies for $949 Galleri tests made by Grail, according to John Hancock, a division of Manulife Financial Corp. The tests detect DNA from tumors in the bloodstream, with the goal of finding cancer when it’s still in its most treatable stages. John Hancock is the first life insurance carrier to offer them, according to a spokesperson for Grail.