Archive for March, 2007
With the Center for Disease Control stating that type 2 diabetes has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, life insurance companies are faced with the challenge of how to underwrite the disease so that it is properly assessed in the context to the risk pool they need to protect.
Layman’s terms. Life insurance companies take diabetes and how you treat and manage your own diabetes seriously. They don’t want to sink the ship by taking the issue of diabetes too lightly. Conversely they also don’t want to over react and throw all diabetics overboard.
There are good rates available for life insurance on diabetics. What underwriters want to see can be summed up in just a few words. If you are diabetic and want good life insurance quotes you need to be educated about your condition, concerned enough to do all the right things to control it, and be compliant with the treatment program you are on.
Here are two situations. I will leave you to guess who gets the best insurance rates. To make all things equal we will start with just one person and assume two different courses of action.
Our person is 56. At 5′9 and 270#’s, not dainty by any stretch of the imagination. He finds out on an insurance exam that his A1C is 8.5 and the insurance agent suggests he see his doctor because that indicates some very high glucose levels. He is diabetic!
So, #1 soaks in that information and decides to take action. Since he isn’t all that keen on going to the doctor, he assumes that role himself. He knocks off some of the bad eating habits that helped him earn that 270# and goes on a diet because he has heard that obesity can affect diabetes. By culling out some of his favorite hobbies like donuts and ice cream….well, pretty much at least, he is finally, after two years, able to get down to a lean and mean 255#’s. He decides he has taken care of the problem and therefore never looks into the issue any further.
Now #2 takes that information from the insurance exam to his doctor. The first thing he asks is what an A1C is. After finding out that it indicates extremely elevated glucose over a long period, he asks the doctor for educational material so he can learn more about diabetes. He starts an oral medication to help bring his glucose under control and because the doctor indicated his blood pressure was running a little high, he starts medication to keep that in check. He then follows doctor’s orders for a diet and exercise program that over the course of two years brings his weight down to 220#’s. His A1C is now down to 6.5, he feels great, and is no longer in need of blood pressure medication. He continues on the diet and exercise with a goal of eventually being down to 190#’s.
OK. I won’t make you guess. Client #1, if purchasing a 250,000, 20 year term policy would likely have to pay in the area of $3600-$4000 per year after working on getting his diabetes under control for two years. Client #2 would probably pay about $1700 per year.
Talk to your independent life insurance agent today about your diabetes and how to earn the best rates possible.
March 31st, 2007
With the news out this week that a recent study shows little or no added health benefit for a heart patient that has a stent put into a vein, stand by to see how life insurance underwriting will react.
Quoting an Associated Press article by Mark Jewell, “Drug-coated stents have been implanted in more than 6 million people worldwide — a modern record for fastest use of a new medical device.
But use has fallen since evidence emerged that drug-coated stents carry a slightly higher risk of triggering blood clots months or years later. Many doctors have returned to using the older bare-metal stents or doing bypass surgery instead of angioplasty until more is known.”
In the past life insurance underwriting has actually been more favorable for angioplasty with stents versus bypass surgery, seemingly less invasive and risky. Now, with potential risk from clots, that may switch. There is further revelation that, inspite of recommended guidelines, many patients receive stents prematurely.
In an article on the home page of www.angioplasty.org dated 3/28/07, they state “Have patients with stable angina been given stents unnecessarily? Under current practice guidelines, it is recommended that patients with stable angina first be given a trial of medical therapy, along with lifestyle changes and risk factor reduction.”
From years of working on life insurance for cardiac patients, the experience seems to be that often the angioplasty and stent precede any attempts at risk factor reduction.
One thing you can count on is that this information will be perceived differently by each life insurance company’s medical director who scrutinizes the report. That simply makes it more important for heart attack or coronary artery disease patients who are seeking life insurance to seek out the best independent life insurance agent you can find.
March 31st, 2007
I will simply start with my standard off the shelf advice. If you talk to a life insurance agent, mention you had breast cancer, and they immediately tell you that you are uninsurable, they are either stupid or lazy, or both. Go find an independent agent that understands that uninsurable is rare and in fact good rates are more the norm than the exception. Underwriting cancer, coronary artery disease, strokes and other significant health issues are hard work for the agent, but a good agent will leave no stone unturned in producing the best possible outcome.
I’m not saying that every breast cancer survivor will get great rates. Anyone who is a survivor has probably earned a degree due to the amount of study they have done on breast cancer. When you do that study you begin to understand the wide variances there can be between one case and another. Your cancer had a stage and grade and your oncologist probably told you in detail what it meant. Then you likely went to Google and made sure he or she knew what she was talking about. It went something like this.
You either had in situ breast cancer, a cancer that was isolated to either a milk duct or the lining of the breast, or you had an invasive cancer that fit into one of the following stages. :
Stage 1 The tumor measures less than 2cm. The lymph glands in the armpit are not affected and there are no signs that the cancer has spread elsewhere.
Stage 2 The tumor was between 2 and 5cm, or the lymph glands in the armpit are affected, or both. However, there are no signs that the cancer has spread.
Stage 3 The tumor is larger than 5cm and may be attached to something such as the muscle or skin. The lymph glands are usually affected, but there are no signs that the cancer has spread beyond the breast or the lymph glands in the armpit.
Stage 4 The tumour is of any size, but the lymph glands are usually affected and the cancer has spread to other parts of the body. This is secondary or metastatic breast cancer.
Then your cancer was assigned a grade. The grade gives an idea of how quickly the cancer may develop. There are three grades: grade 1 (low-grade), grade 2 (moderate or intermediate grade) and grade 3 (high-grade).
And finally your cancer was either ER positive or ER negative. ER (Estrogen receptor) positive being the easier of the two to treat.
The same way your oncologist talked to you about how agressive your cancer was by reviewing the stage, grade and ER status is the same way a life insurance underwriter will look at you from a mortality standpoint. A low grade or insitu cancer, stage 1 and receptor positive is going to be easier to treat and insurable at low rates sooner. A higher grade, higher stage cancer may require higher rates for some years after the end of treatment, but will eventually also be insurable at standard or better rates.
When you begin to look for life insurance, be sure you have all of the pathology information so the agent will know which companies to go to and will be able to provide the best guidance. Finally, it would be rare indeed for a post treatment breast cancer to be uninsurable.
March 30th, 2007
Four tips for type 1 and type 2 diabetics who are looking for life insurance and don’t want to pay through the nose for it.
1. Learn about your diabetes. Be able to explain to an independent agent when it was diagnosed, exactly what your treatment is, and if there have been any collateral health issues. For type 1 diabetics collateral health issues might be kidney or eyesight problems. For type 2 diabetics, neuropathy or hypertension are often associated problems.
2. Know your lab results. If you are taking care of yourself, then you not only check your glucose frequently, but you also will likely get quarterly labwork and a consultation with your doctor. Your labs will have a lot of valuable information on it. Ask your doctor what the results mean. Ask if they are good or bad. Keep a copy for yourself each time you go so you have your own record. Ask about and remember what your A1C level is each time you go. Also keep a record of your blood pressure readings. Your doctor will take them every time you are there. If you already have hypertension, monitor your blood pressure at home as well.
3. Understand control and what it means for your life (and life insurance). With good control of your diabetes you can expect a long healthy life. If you don’t stay on top of your treatment and don’t avoid the temptation to be slack about your lifestyle, you can end up with coronary artery disease, retinopathy, and a host of other life changing and life ending problems.
4. If you are diabetic and are taking care of yourself, never, NEVER, let a life insurance agent tell you that you are uninsurable. A good independent agent will be able to find what you need at a reasonable rate as long as you have done your part and taken your diabetes seriously.
March 29th, 2007
As treatment for all types of cancer have improved, life insurance underwriters have been forced to re-evaluate their guidelines for different types of treatment and how the mortality experience has actually changed.
One good example is with prostate cancer. While the base guidelines are still pretty much the same, that being that the diagnosis level psa is 10 or below, and the cancer is a medium to low grade and stage, there have been some shifts in acceptability of treatment methods and post treatment results.
The historical majority of prostate cancer treatment has been by radical prostatectomy. In medium to lower grade cancers this is usually sufficient without chemo or radiation to resolve the issue. Because there is no prostate, the resulting psa is 0 and from an underwriting perspective that would be the approvable result.
A little fuzzier underwriting guideline has to do with men who chose to forego the prostatectomy and instead have a radioactive seed implant. Because the prostate remains in place, there is a psa level post treatment. The guideline for years has been that a person can get better than standard rates when their psa reaches .50 or less with a seed implant. The problem has been, while the seed implant has been very effective in treating the cancer, it is not uncommon for the psa to never quite make it to the benchmark .50.
Recent thinking from underwriters has been, especially in older men, to cut some slack on that bench mark and allow readings as high as 1.0. This will have a substantial impact on the number of cancer survivors who will qualify for better rates than in the past. It may not seem like a huge leap of faith on the part of the insurance companies, but rest assured it is a quantum leap for someone whose psa came down to, say, .65 and bottomed out.
It will take a good independent life insurance agent to determine the right company for you to seek insurance quotes from. These are not changes that will be quickly embraced by the New York Life’s and Northwestern Mutual’s of the industry. They will likely stick to the more conservative approach for some time to come.
As treatments improve and the success and mortality experience improves, expect to see underwriting changes follow for breast cancer survivors. We have already seen quantum leaps from 10 years ago and it’s only going to get better.
March 28th, 2007
Advocacy is defined in the dictionary as “supporting or promoting the interests of another”. There are several “advocacy” groups that promote life insurance to their members or to the group of people that they would suggest they are advocates on behalf of.
I have a particular problem with three advocacy groups that you would suspect would offer the best possible life insurance products to their members or audience, when in fact they offer downright bad deals and try to gloss it over by appearing to be your “friend”.
Let’s talk about Gerber. They may be pretty good at baby food, but I can tell you that the juvenile life insurance, or children’s life insurance they offer, is far from a good deal. They offer a guaranteed issue product, but from a price and benefit standpoint it pales in comparison to what can be found through an independent life insurance agent. Cute baby on the jar. Lousy advice on life insurance!
And then there’s the AOPA. For non pilots, that is the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Go to their website and you will see how they purport to be advocates for private pilots in just about every area, including life insurance. Their recommended company is Minnesota Life. There are so many companies out there that can beat Minnesota Life for aviation covered life insurance, that if you weren’t depending on them to be your advocate, it would be laughable. If you search under life insurance on their website you will actually find where they admit that they get a kick back from Minnesota Life. They use the money to enhance their advocacy. Maybe Minnesota Life’s rates are high because they have to pay the AOPA to steer business their way.
And last but not least, being old enough to be a member, our beloved AARP. Claiming to be an advocate for us elderly folks and really not doing it is, well, WRONG!!!!!!!!!! AARP pushes a New York Life term product that is overpriced to start with, the price goes up every 5 years, and after age 80 it goes away. “One that supports or promotes the interests of another?” Now I don’t know if AARP gets a kickback from New York Life, but I do know that they don’t allow any other life insurance advertising in their periodicals or on their website.
You want an advocate? Someone who really provides what the definition suggests? Get your insurance quotes for your term insurance, universal life insurance or whole life insurance from an independent life insurance agent. Get unbiased advice from an agent that isn’t being an advocate to a specific insurance company or an organization, but to you.
March 28th, 2007
After reading a New York Times article about long term care insurance today I was both disgusted and encouraged with the information I found. The Charles Duhigg article talks about all the senior citizens who pay in enormous amounts of money to insure their long term care only to finally get to the point of filing a claim and being denied for absurd and really obscene reasons.
It talks about a company called Conseco that denied a long term care claim because the client”was not sufficiently infirm, despite her early-stage dementia and the 37 pills she takes each day.”
“In 2003, a subsidiary of Conseco, Bankers Life and Casualty, sent an 85-year-old woman suffering from dementia the wrong form to fill out, according to a lawsuit, then denied her claim because of improper paperwork. Last year, according to another pending suit, the insurer Penn Treaty American decided that a 92-year-old man had so improved that he should leave his nursing home despite his forgetfulness, anxiety and doctor’s orders to seek continued care. Another suit contended that a company owned by the John Hancock Insurance Company had tried to rescind the coverage of a 72-year-old man when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease four years after buying the policy.”
It’s no wonder that the health insurance industry has a reputation today, and not a good one. It’s time for the National Assocation of Insurance Commissioners to reign in this type of abhorrant business practice. It is criminal for an insurance company to mistreat any customer, but to prey on the elderly in their zeal to sell long term care products, and then try to slither out from under their responsibility is just too much.
I assume you have been waiting for what I found encouraging in that article. I found encouragement in my own end of the insurance industry, life insurance. I find it encouraging that with all the claims that have been filed through our office, not one has gone unpaid. I found it encouraging that one of the largest providers of term life insurance was also cited in this article, but in a positive way. “By comparison, Genworth Financial, the largest long-term-care insurer, received only one complaint for every 12,434 policies.”
As an independent agent I would encourage those who are looking at long term care insurance to go the extra mile in your research. Complaints about insurance companies don’t come from nowhere. Lawsuits, while we are a litigious society, generally indicate an iceberg under the tip that you see. Buyer beware!
March 28th, 2007
In the excitement of starting a new business all the focus is generally onward and upward and the tendency is to kind of overlook the downside to success. This is more prevelant in partnerships, but is also a real problem for sole proprietors and corporations. Business life insurance can protect your family from losing the fruit of your labor and can also keep someone else from owning part of your business if a partner dies.
The obvious need for a business owner is to carry enough term insurance to make sure that all the debts of the business are taken care and don’t become a burden to your family. Most small businesses don’t have any real “market value”, so your heirs won’t really have anything to sell if you die prematurely. A life insurance policy can replace the lost income value of that business to your family.
In the case of a partnership it becomes more complicated. In most states if a partner in a business dies, their portion of the business is left to their heirs, their family. So you could go home one night and come back the next day with a new partner, one you may not want to work with at all or one that may not have any qualifications to work in the business. This problem is best solved by putting together a buy/sell agreement and funding it with buy/sell life insurance policies.
Then, in the case of an untimely death, the life insurance policy would provide the funds necessary to buy out your partner’s portion of the business. I know in my business I would much rather come in that morning and know that all of this was planned for and everyone will get what they need. Contact a good independent life insurance agent for quotes today on business life insurance.
March 27th, 2007
It used to be that in order to secure the best life insurance quotes a person needed to be nearly Superman, or slightly better if possible. There was certainly a day not all that long ago when treatment for hypertension or high cholesterol would have bumped you from contention for the best rates.
Life insurance companies today are becoming more tolerant of prescription drug control of cholesterol and high blood pressure because, simply put, they see an obvious improvement in the risk that they are insuring. They would certainly rather reward someone who recognizes a health problem and treats it than someone who doesn’t know they have a health problem, or worse yet, has a health problem and doesn’t address it.
There are plenty of companies today who will offer their best rate to someone who is treating their cholesterol. Of course, the best rate assumes that the drugs are doing their job and the cholesterol is well controlled. Along with the upside control of cholesterol a person would also need to monitor their liver functions as elevated liver functions caused by cholesterol lowering drugs could bump you out of the best rate. Bottom line with insurance companies and doctors is that a balance is struck between finding the right drug that will help with cholesterol and not cause side effects.
Logic would tell me there is more than one company that will reward well controlled high blood pressure with their best rates, but to the best of my knowledge, Banner Life is the only company that has stepped forward in that area. Their only caveat is that the treatment has to have gone on for at least two years (long enough to establish stability) and the condition is well controlled. Banner Life also happens to be a company that is at the forefront in underwriting cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. Again, with both of those, control is the focal point. And as always, all risk factors are taken into account, so don’t make the leap of assumption that even though you are overweight, good cholesterol control will buy you a ticket to the top rates.
So, doing what the doctor orders is best for your health, and happens to be something that life insurance companies want to see as well. Call your independent life insurance agent today and talk about how you can get low rates even with preventive medicine.
March 25th, 2007
| A frequently asked question about life insurance is “how long before the policy becomes effective?” The supposed “waiting period” has evolved from a misunderstanding from two different directions.Along with the waiting period question is also a misunderstanding about excluding medical conditions in life insurance policies. For instance, if a person has had a history of a heart attack or a stroke, will the life insurance policy exclude any benefit if the death is caused by another heart attack or stroke? Again, this assumption comes from a common misconception that life insurance and health insurance are underwritten in the same way.First the waiting period. With traditional life insurance there is what’s known as the suicide and contestability period. With a few shorter exceptions this is a two year period where the company does not have to pay for death due to suicide, and they also have the right to investigate and contest death due to other causes. Suicide is pretty straight forward. Contestability on the other hand may be a little more confusing, although certainly nothing to fear as long as you and your insurance agent have done a good job up front.
When a company investigates a claim that occurs in the first two years of the policy, they are simply reviewing the records to make sure that nothing was misrepresented or hidden from them when they originally issued the policy. Based on what they find, they can take one of three course of action. They can approve and pay the claim as presented. They can deny the claim if information the uncover, had they been aware of it in the beginning, would have led them to decline to offer coverage. They can also determine based on the new information that they would have approved the policy, but possibly at a higher rate (premium) than what the insured was paying. In that case, the death benefit is generally paid, minus the additional premium that should have been paid. I think it is very important to state emphatically that companies aren’t looking for a way to get out of paying a claim. They want to pay the claim but also want to make sure it is a valid claim.
As for the question about medical condiditions! When a life insurance company approves a policy, it is approved at a rate that takes into consideration your risk based on your health. So, while you might pay more for your coverage if you’ve had say, an angioplasty or bypass surgery, you would be fully covered if you were to die from a cardiac event as well as any other cause of death.
If you still have questions about this commonly misunderstood part of life insurance, contact your independent life insurance agent and have them review it in more detail. Make sure your questions are answered. |
March 24th, 2007
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