Archive for June, 2008
Thank you again for all the prayers on my Mom’s behalf. She had a sentinel node biopsy of the lymph nodes yesterday and it showed that cancer had in fact migrated from her breast at least to the nearest lymph nodes. I will continue to follow her process in this forum, not because I have a need to focus attention on my mother, but because her process is one that is shared by a few hundred thousand women every year in our country.
She will be referred to the same cancer clinic that my Dad went to when he was dealing with bladder cancer (still in remission). I called there this morning with a question. My question revolved around the fact that cancer of the lymph nodes is mcommonly known as lymphoma, so if cancer moves from the breast into the lymph system, is it still breast cancer or is it lymphoma. The answer is that it is still breast cancer and apparently that is an important distinction when it comes to treatment.
The lymph system is interesting in that it is an extremely important part of our immune system, helping to fight disease including cancer. But, because of the extensive nature of the system, it can also be responsible for being the vehicle (or highway) that allows cancer to spread throughout the body.
The next step for my Mom will be meeting with the doctor on Monday to get the results of the pathology of the cancer found in the lymph nodes. She should, at that time, be referred to the oncology team that will make a recommendation for treatment.
Bottom line. The good news for the hundred of thousands of women who are in this boat is that the treatment has come a long way and survival rates are excellent. With those survival rates, for those who are in the market for life insurance (unlike my mom), within a year post treatment a woman should be back in the hunt.
June 27th, 2008
As we’ve discussed many times, good life insurance rates are available if you have bipolar disorder if you meet certain criteria, underwriting guidelines. For the purposes of underwriting, while the companies may call them guidelines, assume they are rules. You are simply not going to slide by sort of meeting most of the criteria.
If I could sum up all of the criteria, it would be something like well controlled, or stable. But rather than a summary because I want people to know exactly what works and what doesn’t work going in, another review is in order. Remember that while these guidelines are pretty specific to bipolar disorder, they can be used for any mood or mental disorder including depression, anxiety disorders and attention deficit disorder.
1. No suicide attempts ever and no notations of suicidal thoughts in the last 10 years in your medical records.
2. No hospitalization for bipolar in the last 10 years other than for the purposes of diagnosis.
3. Compliant and proactive with prescribed treatment. No taking it when you feel like you need it and not taking it when you feel like you don’t. I guarantee you that it doesn’t say “as needed” on your prescription.
4. Stable family and work life. Underwriters understand that people change jobs, and unfortunately marriages don’t always work out, but inability to hold a job is different than changing jobs. A marriage not working out is different than one that is devastated by out of control bipolar.
5. You need to be able to exhibit social functionality. You can’t be on disability for bipolar. Being on disability means you are not able to function normally.
6. No drinking problems.
These criteria don’t preclude even the majority of people with bipolar disorder. To the contrary, from all I’ve learned in working with the bipolar community these criteria probably describe the majority. We have been able to successfully find the coverage that people from CEO’s to stay at home moms have needed in order to protect their families.
Bottom line. Not all companies will approve you even if you meet those criteria. Some will decline you just on the mention of bipolar disorder. That is just a quirk of the industry and the reason you should seek the assistance of an independent agent. An agent with experience in mood disorders will know what to ask, where to shop it and how to get it approved.
June 26th, 2008
I seldom have a week go by where no clients get surprised by what is in their medical records. I’ve said it before and you know me, I’ll keep repeating it. Medical records are a collection of facts (lab and test results) and rambling thoughts transcribed from the terrible handwriting of an overworked doctor who really doesn’t feel like they are making money when they are updating records.
How can I put this gently? If your medical records don’t have any mistakes in them, it’s only because you have actively monitored what goes in. If you have never reviewed your medical records there is about 110% chance that it contains mistakes, inaccuracies, and occasionally pages from someone else’s records.
I know that there has to be a level of trust between a patient and a doctor and some doctors deserve that trust when it comes to medical care. I think most doctors drop the ball when it comes to educating their patients on medical issues, but these guys are overworked and there are only so many hours in the day. How overworked. Reader’s Digest recently interviewed a few dozen doctors and wrote an article containing their random thoughts on several issues. A lot of these doctors are simply sick and tired of whiny patients and the state of their records probably reflects that.
The reason this is a life insurance issue is that underwriters use medical records to determine how much a person is going to pay for life insurance, and often whether they will get insurance at all. Underwriters have to assume that what you have told them is a layman’s opinion and what is contained in your records is medical fact. So, when you lay out your best recollection of your medical history for an agent and that goes on the application, it is at some point verified or trumped by the information in your medical records. If the information doesn’t match, you lose.
Bottom line. Get a copy of your medical records. Yes, all of them. Bring up any error or discrepancies to the doctor and insist that they be corrected or that your assertion that there is erroneous information in your records be added. After everything is cleaned up, insist that a copy of notes from any visit are proofread by you before they are entered.
June 25th, 2008
And they all said………….DUH! I’ve gone on “ad nauseum” about the impact that heart issues can have on life insurance and how to approach getting life insurance at the best possible rates after a cardiac occurrence, so this week I am making an effort to be proactive. So, my advice is just don’t have that heart attack!
A friend of mine used to say that I talked and wrote in word salads. Never did figure out what that meant so I just keep rattling on. If I lose you, hang in there until the end and there is a better than 40% chance that I will make some relevant point. Obviously it makes sense that not having a cardiac event is a good way to ensure better life insurance rates, so how do we accomplish that? In a post yesterday I brought up the antioxidant idea. A little wine, a little dark chocolate, etc.
Today Reader’s Digest lays out the whole game plan. We know that fit versus fat is a good thing. Not smoking and exercising regularly are good things. But, as only Reader’s Digest can, they offer a condensed version of 30 ways to avoid blowing up and splattering heart parts all over.
From a life insurance underwriting point of view this game plan and avoiding a heart attack is going to put you into the home run life insurance rate category, the rates I wish I was paying. But also consider that underwriters would look more favorably on an applicant who had cardiac issues and started following these guidelines. They truly like to see and reward those who take what has happened seriously and change their lifestyle.
Bottom line. Life is so much more enjoyable when you have been and are taking care of yourself. Part of the enjoyment comes each time you pay that lower life insurance premium.
June 25th, 2008
A lot has been made over the years about diet and exercise being key components of a successful battle with hypertension or high blood pressure. But from the fringes we keep hearing snippets about drinking a glass of wine a day, eating dark chocolate and other things that seem oddly out of place.
Diet and dark chocolate! Diet and dark chocolate! Almost seems oxymoronic. I know from my experience that when I’m munching down dark chocolate, the word diet is secretly deleted from my brain during that moment. Maybe that is the power of antioxidants. Maybe they aren’t really good for you, they just erase guilt from your mind so, a little wine, a truffle….life is good.
But such is not the conclusion of studies that show that antioxidants actually do lower high blood pressure. This happens through a process of antioxidants inhibiting something called free radicals (sounds like something out of the 60’s).
This ability to inhibit free radicals can have far reaching effects, staving off high blood pressure which can prevent strokes and helping to prevent some of the big boys like heart disease and cancer.
So, will you get lower life insurance rates if you explain on your application that you eat blueberries or dark chocolate or (yum), dark chocolate covered blueberries from Harry and Davids, daily? Well, not from the mere mention of the fact you won’t, but a healthier you is a better life insurance risk and that should lead to lower rates.
Bottom line. Do what your mom told you. Eat chocolate and drink wine….and eat your vegetables. Science is on her side.
June 24th, 2008
According to the aficionados, the only thing better than a garage sale is an estate sale. In the best of situations this is after all the good stuff has gone to family members and the executor of the estate throws the rest of it in the front yard so their job can finally be done.
Many times though, this is a serious attempt to raise money to pay the expenses of the estate, whether that is debt, state death tax or federal estate taxes. This is when families see all that a loved one has worked all their life to accumulate go to strangers for pennies on the dollar. This is what happens when there is no estate planning.
While we generally think of the wealthy as those who use life insurance for estate planning, the truth is that a lack of life insurance can cause an equally devastating event with the less well to do when a person dies with debt that needs to be paid or with a mortgage on their most valuable asset. Unless someone’s estate plan is to leave a mess and not worry about it, a visit with an independent life insurance agent is a prudent idea. Even if the outcome isn’t perfect (and most estate plans aren’t), the truth is that having some life insurance in force is far better than having nothing.
You don’t need to worry about buying life insurance to add value to your estate, but do your loved ones a favor and have at least enough that they still have fond memories of you once the mess you’ve left behind is sorted out and cleaned up.
For those with larger estates, let’s just get practical. Your estate can go to your family if you plan properly, or you can give half to them and half to the government if you don’t.
Bottom line. There are those who honestly don’t care what kind of mess is left behind. For them, while not a nice thing to do, doing nothing is probably an adequate plan. For the rest of us, it’s time to take this part of life seriously, not for us, but for those we leave behind.
June 23rd, 2008
There is a real tendency in our society to brand the morbidly obese as taking the easy way out of the problem they’ve created by considering gastric bypass surgery.
Gastric bypass reduces the size of the stomach by stapling off the majority. This causes massive weight loss due to the inability to take in enough food to amount to significant calories and simply curbing appetite. Saying that gastric bypass is the easy way out is a bit like saying heart bypass surgery is the easy way out of having a heart attack.
The truth is that chronic morbid obesity can lead to diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Studies have shown that diabetes can actually be cured by the forced weight loss that comes with gastric bypass. And as much as those of us who have never been obese would like to think it’s no big deal to drop 100+ pounds, get a grip. It is a big deal and it is not easy. Dropping large amounts of weight and keeping it off is a mental and physical battle. Just like being a life insurance agent, if it was easy everyone would be doing it.
From a life insurance perspective gastric bypass is a good thing….after some time. The rule of thumb with the best of companies will be a year to two years after weight loss stabilizes. It can take one to two years to reach that point, so post gastric bypass it can take three to four years before companies will consider you at rates commensurate with your actual weight. Why the caution? There can be post surgical complications such as infection or intestinal leakage. Weight loss can be reversed in some cases where the new, smaller stomach stretches. Underwriters want to know that everything has worked out and generally, given those timetables, they can be pretty confident that the issue is gone.
Bottom line. Any stigma that gastric bypass has should be stuffed away. It is a life saving procedure, not an easy way out.
June 23rd, 2008
There is a rampant misconception out there that life insurance is too expensive and for that reason many people forgo even considering it as a financial planning tool. In a time when many families live paycheck to paycheck it is understandable that they would turn their backs on anything that they perceive as expensive.
But you know what is free? It doesn’t cost a dime to talk to a professional independent agent and find out exactly what life insurance will cost and exactly how much insurance you can comfortably fit into your budget. People are often pleasantly surprised, and relieved, to know that even the most meager of budgets can generally provide some meaningful amount of family protection.
One of the great safety nets that has been built into the life insurance application process is the free look period. In most states the free look period will allow you, having applied and been approved for insurance, to look it over without any obligation for 20 days. If you decide for any reason that it isn’t going to work for you, it can be returned to the agent without any cost to you.
One of the other great opportunities, although not all agents or agencies will do this, is to apply through an agent who doesn’t require any money with the application. The truth is that there is rarely a good reason for an agent to ask for money up front other than the “psychological consummation of the sale”. Even though the money is fully refundable if you withdraw the application or in the end you don’t accept the policy, it is just a fact that it throws up a mental red flag about changing your mind. People are less likely to take action that is adverse to an agent that they’ve given money to.
There are plenty of agents out there who agree with me that the process should have no hooks in it from beginning to end. Personally I would steer clear of any agent or agency that requires you to place money with the application. Again, there is no reason other than psychological for them to ask for it. They should have the confidence to win your trust by coming through with the policy you need first, and then earn your business.
Bottom line. Take advantage of the experience and expertise of an independent agent of your choice and find out exactly what you can do for your family without busting the budget.
June 20th, 2008
Because of the exceptionally high success rate in treatment of prostate cancer, it stands out as ultimately one of the most insurable cancer histories from a life insurance underwriting view.
Prostate cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer among men, but it has often been said that virtually all men who live to an old age will have prostate cancer to some degree. Very often it goes undiagnosed because it is a slow growing cancer and most men who have it will die from something else never knowing it was there. Having said that, about 1 in 35 who have been diagnosed will die from the disease.
Life insurance underwriters are forever focused on “mortality experience”, and the good news with prostate cancer is that experience is very favorable. Because of more aggressive education and screening and improved treatment, the chances of surviving a diagnosis of prostate cancer is very much in your favor. The key is screening.
For the most favorable life insurance outcome early detection’s importance can’t be overstated. Underwriters want to see diagnosis with an early stage (1 or 2) and a low to moderate grade (no more than a Gleason grade 6), coupled with a diagnosis PSA level of usually 10-12 or less. By far the majority of prostate cancer is detected these days when the PSA starts showing consistent elevation from test to test, but is still within the normal (less than 4) range.
Cancer caught at this point will almost always meet the stage and grade criteria and will ultimately be successfully treated. The final criteria to be met is post treatment. If a person opts to have a radical prostatectomy underwriters expect that the PSA will go to 0 and once it has been there for a year, often standard or better rates can be found. If treatment is done by radioactive seed implant, the PSA threshold is .5 or below for at least a year.
As mentioned in previous posts, watchful waiting is not considered by underwriters to be treatment and anyone pursuing this completely legitimate option will be treated for insurance purposes as having untreated cancer. I have yet to find a company that will not decline to offer insurance in this instance.
Bottom line. The good news from a guy’s perspective is that, if almost all of us will have prostate cancer at some point, at least it isn’t one of the devastating killer types of cancer like lung or colon cancer where survival rates are not nearly as good. If you’ve had prostate cancer and need life insurance, seek out an independent agent to help you. Be prepared to provide a pathology report and know what your current PSA is.
June 20th, 2008
Normally I would not “mix business with politics”, but for this post I am setting life insurance aside and using this forum to make my case for what I believe is the most important decision this country is facing concerning our future.
Let me preface this by saying that I have been voting for 35 years now. There haven’t been a lot of really great choices at the presidential level, but I’ve always voted my heart and my gut and done the best I could. I have never felt compelled to get involved in a campaign. I have never donated to a campaign (unless you count my portion of the matching federal campaign fund). I have just voted and lived with the consequences. That changed this year.
I have given a lot back to our country and the communities that I have lived in over the years, donating time and money for charity, good causes, disaster relief and so on. But I have never considered a step so bold as to answer Kennedy’s query in 1961, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country”. America has come a long way since then. Unfortunately it has come a long way in the wrong direction.
People don’t reach out and help their neighbors the way they used to. People don’t get involved with their community like they used to. Adults don’t give their time to help our youth become responsible young adults the way they used to. Our country has become self centered both from an individual and a global perspective. This is not the country that I grew up in as a child.
Barack Obama isn’t the answer to our country’s problems, but I believe he is the leader that can most quickly help us all to find the answers. Barack Obama can’t fix overnight what this country, politicians and citizens alike, have gone about messing up for the last 40 years, but I believe he is the leader who can help us all to get a grip and turn in the right direction. Barack Obama isn’t exciting because he is a good orator or because he will be the first black president, but I believe he is exciting because he is the first presidential candidate since Kennedy that has recognized that the power should come from the bottom up and it is the job of the president to encourage that energy and funnel it in positive directions.
Barack Obama, unlike so many choices of the past, is not the lesser of two evils as I’ve heard so often. The evil is the direction of the country and I believe that Barack Obama is the right person at the right time to help this nation confront that enemy and win.
Much will be made through this election about whether Barack Obama has the experience to be the president. Let’s be real. The only people that can submit a resume sufficient to qualify themselves to hired as the president, would be a former president (and most of them wouldn’t get hired again). There will be challenges just like and unlike any president has ever seen and the most we can hope for is that we have someone at the helm that is willing the face those challenges and use his God given good sense on our behalf, and I believe that Barack Obama is the right person at the right time.
Bottom line. I believe our nation is about to turn a historic corner. My prayer is that our nation will come together and embrace this opportunity and fight for this breath of fresh air that we are being offered. It is not by blind faith that I support Barack Obama, but by my true faith that God answers prayers.
June 19th, 2008
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