Archive for January, 2008
Ahh, my morning cup of coffee! And the second one. Now we’re talking….maybe a bit too fast, but we are definitely talking. It’s fun to watch the cudos and cabashes that coffee takes. It’s a rare month that goes by when coffee isn’t credited for or blamed for something.
Most recently coffee has been lumped in with soft drinks as a problem for those with diabetes. The claim is that glucose levels go up with caffeine intake. That kind of blew my first thought. I figured they were going to dive off into those “wanna be” coffee drinkers who really don’t do anything more than turn their cup of sugar a light brown color.
But it is the caffeine in coffee, soft drinks and tea that is the culprit. While those with diabetes are looking for control, the study results don’t indicate that caffeine intake is the biggest culprit by any stretch of the imagination. The blind study used placebos interspersed with capsules that contained the caffeine equivalent of 4 cups of coffee. Two things come to mind if I am going to defend my coffee drinking habit. First, not that many people drink 4 cups a day, and second, if you take a capsule that has a 4 cup equivalent, it seems like that is more like guzzling 4 cups than having those cups over the course of a morning or a day.
Bottom line. Life insurance underwriters like to see control as measured by your fasting glucose and your hbA1c. While a heavy coffee drinker might want to consider this cautionary study, for most a lifestyle of good diet and exercise, keeping weight under control and avoiding extremes of just about anything will get you where you need to go. Life insurance rates don’t have to be off the charts as long as you are compliant with treatment and have the controlled glucose that should be the result of that.
January 31st, 2008
Smoking is often touted by those who partake as a way to calm themselves. Of course, from a life insurance standpoint, calm or not, smoking carries so much health baggage with it that rates for smokers are dramatically higher than non smokers.
A recent study suggests that the feeling of calmness may be deceiving as women seem to have a significantly increased risk of high blood pressure (hypertension) if they smoke. Along with that increased risk comes the risk of heart disease.
We have discussed many times that blood pressure and cholesterol are the two most common surprises on insurance exams. Hypertension isn’t called the silent killer for no reason. Especially if it is borderline or mildly elevated, a person may not notice the symptoms, or it may come on over a period of time and it just blends in and a person doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.
The good news is that blood pressure is often easily controlled by lifestyle changes, and in the absence of the ability to make that change, also easily controlled with medication. Certainly a change to not smoking is going to have benefits across the board. After 12 months of no nicotine use, life insurance rates can be cut in half or more.
Bottom line. High blood pressure is just one more reason to consider giving up on smoking. The list of health issues connected to smoking is constantly growing. The truth is that there are no benefits to it, only downsides.
January 31st, 2008
You guessed it. I got another trade magazine with an article suggesting that whole life is the only type of life insurance a person should buy. If you don’t buy whole life as the article suggests, you just don’t get it.
I have access to whatever life insurance products are available each time I counsel a client on how to protect their family, their assets and ultimately their estate. If, after reviewing the needs, I felt like whole life was the best product for my client, short or long term, I would be the first to present it for consideration.
The argument for whole life that I continue to see popping up in articles and pouring out of the mouths of whole life agents assumes that there are only two type of life insurance options, term insurance and whole life. They try to make term the evil product because, well, it is only around for a certain period of time, the term. Whole life, on the other hand, is around forever, or until you start spending the cash value trying to pay for the huge premiums.
Whole life is touted as a permanent product, and in a perfect world it would be. The truth is that whole life, with its’ cash value accumulation, is its’ own worst enemy. The cash value, if you can afford to get the policy to the point where it is significant at all, too often becomes not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but the source of paying the overpriced premiums when you finally cry “Uncle”.
I don’t pretend that all life insurance challenges are met by term insurance, although I suspect that by far the majority are. There are permanent insurance needs, and this is where the whole life agents dance right by the more affordable and safer product, universal life with a no lapse guarantee. It will be there as long as it’s needed, until death due you part, at about one third of the cost of whole life. The safety feature is that it doesn’t contain a cash value accumulation feature that can be used to wreck your policy.
I have seen so many cases of people choosing to be underinsured because a whole life agent has filled their heads with the sugarplums of cash value. They need a million in coverage for their family and settle for $250,000 because that’s all of the whole life they can afford. The perception they have bought is that the cash value has somehow made up for the fact that their family is going to be struggling with a death benefit far too small to meet the needs.
I’ve said this before and I expect I will be saying it when I die. The real reason that agents sell whole life is all about cash value. It’s called commission. Ask that whole life agent how much commission they make the first year and every year that you renew your policy. Ask them what they would make if they sold term or universal life with NLG.
Bottom line. If you have whole life insurance as the base of your life insurance portfolio, or if you have someone selling you on the virtues of whole life, get the facts before you pull the trigger. Do a spreadsheet. Consider carefully whether your needs are permanent or temporary. Get a second opinion from an agent that isn’t in love with your money.
January 30th, 2008
What do the people in the following list have in common?
Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Hans Christian Anderson, Dick Cavett, Kitty Dukakis, Ted Turner, Jonathan Winters, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Connie Francis and Charlie Pride.
The most obvious thing is that they are all famous and extremely accomplished in their chosen fields. Writers, Actors, Singer/Song writers, Poets and Businessmen. They are all also bipolar (or were when they were alive).
If, as so many life insurance agents and companies claim, people with bipolar who uninsurable and bad risks, who underwrote the life insurance on Ted Turner. Obviously all insurance companies don’t view this the same way.
Let me tell you what Ted Turner has going for him that is no different from a huge number of people with bipolar. He’s filthy rich. Just kidding, although I suspect there are a large number of very successful bipolar businesspeople. What they all have in common is that they have embraced the fact that they have a disorder that needs to be managed. They follow the doctors orders. They are compliant with their treatment. Because of this their bipolar is controlled and their lives are stable.
Bottom line. Whether you are filthy rich or not, adequate life insurance is affordable for those that fall into the compliant and stable category.
January 30th, 2008
In a post a few days ago concerning the practice of “watchful waiting” that is used in low stage, low grade prostate cancer, I offered to poll several life insurance companies to see how they felt about the practice from a life insurance risk standpoint.
The question really comes down to this. Is watchful waiting a treatment? We know that companies like Prudential underwrite low stage and grade prostate cancer very aggressively if it is traditionally treated and the results are the expected results. For instance, with a radical prostatectomy, the PSA goes down to 0 and stays there.
Here are the results from the first 5 companies that responded to the question, “is there a situation or an age at which watchful waiting would provide an acceptable life insurance risk?” For the purpose of the question, I used a Gleason grade 6 and a T1 stage.
Prucential -Â Quote Declined. Sorry, unable to consider watchful waiting with a Gleason 6 cancer.
ING Reliastar -Â Cannot consider at any age until treated with prostatectomy or radiation
Met Life – Regret we would make no offer on a watchful waiting case
American General -Â Would not offer coverage on untreated prostate cancer
Genworth – We would make no offfer at any age
I think I’m seeing a pattern here. Not an unreasonable pattern, but nevertheless, a pattern that put’s the cancer victim in something of a quandary. On the one side they have their trusted physician making a prudent recommendation based on the best medical knowledge. If there is a chance that the cancer will never need to be treated, watchful waiting makes sense.
On the other side, a life insurance underwriter is stuck with evaluating a risk based on the outcome of treatment. There are some risks that they will accept at higher rates without conclusive treatment. High cholesterol and high blood pressure come to mind. But, even though the odds are in the prostate cancer patient’s favor with watchful waiting, it’s a little tough for an underwriter to fully embrace an untreated cancer that can kill you and kills tens of thousands annually.
Bottom line. The good news for those in this Catch 22 is that, if you and your doctor have chosen watchful waiting, you are likely not going to die from the cancer. The unfortunate news is that, even though the cancer doesn’t appear to be a mortality risk, you can’t get the insurance that would cover other possible causes of death. Unlike health insurance, you can’t exclude cancer and have everything else covered.
January 29th, 2008
Fatigue, lack of concentration and irritability. All classic symptoms of depression. Also, all classic symptoms of sleep apnea. In a New York Times article “Remedy for Sleep Apnea May Lift Depression’s Veil”, the similarity and ways to peel away the layers to a final diagnosis are discussed.
It appears this situation is a cause for mis-diagnosis in many cases. The only way to know for sure is to be tested for sleep apnea. The good news from a life insurance underwriting standpoint is that both issues, once diagnosed, treated and controlled, don’t present huge obstacles in getting competitive life insurance rates.
There are still plenty of companies out there that will cut and run from both depression and sleep apnea, but with the help of a good independent agent, you can find rates that are competitive with the best rates out there.
Bottom line. Make sure you discuss all of your symptoms with your doctor. Treatment for depression won’t do any good if the underlying health issue is sleep apnea.
January 29th, 2008
With my 2007 reward for Redundiferous Excellence safely tucked away on my office shelf, I am, like Tiger Woods and the Fedex Cup, shooting for two in a row. I hope that I have left no chance unturned to drive home the point that life insurance underwriters want to see compliance with treatment and control of the health issue, almost no matter what health impairment we’re talking about.
For years we have tried to be very clear about what it takes to get fair and affordable life insurance rates with diabetes, whether type 1 or type 2. Underwriters want to know that you are compliant with treatment and monitoring. They really like that a person is concerned enough to make sure they do all the right things. Doing this, in most cases, will lead to control of the disease, which will lend itself to better overall health and a better mortality assumption.
Bipolar disorder is no different. There are extreme cases where treatment helps, but just never seems to put the disorder back on the shelf from which it came, but in most cases bipolar can be controlled. Like diabetes, reasonable life insurance rates are available if the bipolar is not severe or debilitating. This is generally measured by whether or not a person has been hospitalized for it and how stable their life is. If a person is able to carry on a relatively normal family and work life, and they are compliant with recommended treatment, decent rates should be available.
Bottom line. Don’t buy into the normal life insurance agent knee jerk reaction that bipolar = decline. A good independent agent will know what questions to ask and what insurance companies to shop to find what you need.
January 28th, 2008
My wife and I are participating in the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University. I have to admit that for all that I have been blessed with, great financial management skills have not been part of the package.
Dave Ramsey is a no nonsense kind of guy when it comes to getting your financial life together. If a person could put his philosophy in a nutshell, it would be to have enough money saved and readily available for emergencies, get out of debt, save for retirement and be generous in your giving.
Many people believe that they have the first and third objectives well in tow with whole life insurance. They have been led to believe that whole life insurance, with it’s cash value accumulation feature, is a savings or retirement plan. I suppose one could argue that if it builds cash, it has saved money. The problem is, when you compare it with buying term insurance and truly saving or investing the difference, or buying non-cash value universal life and saving or investing the difference, the ugly truth floats to the surface.
Whole life insurance is truly a life insurance vehicle that is meant to enrich those involved. Unfortunately, those involved are in this order as far as the enrichment (cash value) goes. First of all is the insurance company. Next is the insurance agent. Last, and yes least, is you.
There should be no mincing of words when it comes to whole life insurance. It is not a savings plan. It is not a retirement plan. It is not even a good way to provide permanent insurance. I have heard all of the arguments to the contrary and I have heard the NW Mutual agents make their well rehearsed pitch for the life saving attributes of whole life. It is pure bunk. The only reason a life insurance agent would sell whole life is, pure and simple, their own enrichment.
Bottom line. If the need is life insurance, buy pure, unadulterated life insurance. If the need is savings or retirement, put your money into pure, unadulterated savings and retirement vehicles. A wide guy once said, “Don’t use your life insurance for savings, and don’t use your savings for life insurance.”
January 28th, 2008
One of the treatment options with older men and younger men with slow growing prostate cancer has always been “watchful waiting”. The premise with older men is that very often the treatment is unnecessary as the cancer never advances far enough to cause discomfort or be the cause of death. With younger men, already knowing that the cancer is there makes it easy to monitor and treatment can safely be delayed until it is actually needed.
Keep in mind that this is an option only when the Gleason grade is 6 or below and the stage is T1 or T2. It truly has to be a slow growing, non invasive cancer. Given that criteria, active surveillance is considered a viable option.
Where that sits with life insurance underwriters is kind of a Catch 22. They understand the reason for the approach and they understand that it is a fairly low risk approach, but they also are stuck underwriting someone who has cancer and isn’t treating it. No treatment means no conclusion as to the success of treatment. I will get some underwriters opinions on what they would do and post it later this week.
Bottom line. Successfully treated low stage and grade prostate cancer is insurable at very reasonable rates. Consult with an independent agent to learn how different companies underwrite this situation.
January 26th, 2008
I’m not sure why I woke up this morning wondering if there are bipolar jokes, but I did. I’ve always been a fan of the “top 10 reasons” type of humor. Probably a spin off from enjoying Jeff Foxworthy.
Tucked away on a site that offered bipolar Christmas carols, I found the following:
Top Ten Reasons that you might have Bi-polar disorder
10. You think Robin Williams should Perk Up.
9. You just bought the Kenny G and Berry Manilow box set just
because.
8. You think going to bed on Monday and getting up on Friday is a
good rest.
7. What do you mean you’re tired — I had only 3 orgasms!
6. You can not remember the number 7.
5. You know the names of at least three antidepressants and fifteen
mood stabilizers.
4. Your cat’s name is Kay and your dog’s name is Jamison.
3. You bring your own research to the doctor’s.
2. You think a drive from Vancouver, BC to Miami is something to do
in four days.
And the Number One reason you may be Bipolar is:
1. Last night you understood the secrets to the universe and this
morning you are contemplating whether the jam goes on top of the
peanut butter or under it.
Here are the top three reasons you can qualify for reasonable life insurance rates if you have bipolar.
1. You’ve never been hospitalized for it.
2. You are compliant with your treatment.
3. Through treatment you are living a stable family and work life.
Bottom line. Uttering the word bipolar should not send your life insurance agent screaming into the dark. Work with an independent agent with a track record of getting the job done.
January 25th, 2008
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