Archive for March 28th, 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
