Archive for November 30th, 2007
Prices are dropping! Save 60% to 70% on term life insurance! We’ve all read the articles and seen the advertisements. We would all like a piece of that less expensive pie to protect our families. But, is it real? Does the agent you are talking to really know how to find those rates? Does your agent really want to find those rates?
Reading an industry magazine, a colorful advertisement caught my eye with the statement “Seize a new opportunity with Lifefirst - the powerful new term product from Foresters”. It presented a comparison with five other companies showing just how great their pricing is. Using a male age 45, best health class, purchasing $600,000 of 20 year term, it stacked up like this. Foresters was $855 annually. Shanendoah was $978, Old Mutual $1236, Americo $1338 and Chesapeake $1396.
Clearly Foresters is a force to be reckoned with, right? While this ad was designed to attract agents to sell Foresters, and it will, the same information will go out to consumers who, with the careful guidance of their Forester’s agent, will come to the same conclusion.
So, is this a true portrayal of the best of the best offerings? I used my Compulife system to put this in perspective. At $855, Foresters came in at number 32. The best rate came from Western Reserve Life at $726 a year. That is $129 a year less, a savings over the life of a 20 year term of $2580.
I have shared before the fact that saving 60% to 70% is really no great trick simply because there are some unbelievably overpriced products out there. This ad didn’t dig deep enough. Provident Life is hoping you will buy their 20 year term insurance for $1416 annually, a full 95% higher than Western Reserve.
Bottom line. You need a good independent agent to sift through all of the nonsense and bad deals for you. With 2000 companiies vying for your life insurance business, let them do the work. If you feel the need to double check and make sure they are trying to pull a Foresters on you, find a free on line quote system and check it out.
November 30th, 2007
New technology called stereoscopic digital mammography is proving to be dramatically more accurate than standard digital mammography.
Initial testing has shown a decrease in false positive findings of almost 50% with the new technology and it reduced the incidence of missed lesions by 40%. This is huge. Eliminating false positives will reduce dramatically the need for further testing and possibly unnecessary invasive biopsies.
Increasing the percentage of lesions found means that more cancer will be detected at earlier stages and that means better treatment results.
Both of these improvements will save stress on those tested and their families. While there may be joy in finding out that a cancer diagnosis was a false positive, there is trauma and grief that comes first.
Bottom line. Better testing has already helped turn the corner on cancer. Combining early detection with better treatment means that more and more women will be surviving breast cancer. The good news from a life insurance perspective is that early detection generally means low stage and grade, a combination that makes reasonable life insurance show up in your life much quicker.
November 30th, 2007
I bet you thought you would never see the day when I had good news to report on obesity in America. Having harped on how America’s obesity has steadily increased for the last 25 years, how it is changing the health and lives of the country through diabetes, cancer and heart disease……finally some good news.
Our friends at the CDC, Centers for Disease Control, released new statistics yesterday showing that overall obesity in the US has leveled off and may have even started decreasing slightly in women over 20. Go Curves Go!!
That’s the good news. The bad news is that more than one third of Americans still fit tightly into the obese category, and while women seem to have figured out the magic bullet, obesity in men is still increasing, albeit not as rapidly as before the year 2000.
Janet Collins, Director of the CDC, seemed a little less than impressed with the leveling off, stating “In view of these alarmingly high rates of obesity in all population groups, CDC has made the prevention of obesity one of its top public health priorities.” And it should be. Having shared the good news, let’s get real about the bad news. Americans’ diet and lifestyle is pathetic at best, and even if the rate of obesity levels off, the health consequences for our country are huge and will become even more so over the next 20 years.
When you take 72 million people and throw them into a high risk pool for diabetes, cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, kidney disease and on and on, the cost in medical care and lives lost is going to be overwhelming when it all hits the fan.
Bottom line. There is just no way to paint a pretty picture from this scene. When mortality rates increase, so will the cost of life insurance. While we have gone for years now with rates decreasing, that bubble has to burst when Generation 3X starts dropping off.
November 30th, 2007
