What Do Bipolar Disorder And Life Insurance Have In Common?
October 15th, 2008
What kind of an insane question is that? Let me try a few commonalities that probably come to mind if you have bipolar and and have applied for life insurance.
How about….all life insurance underwriters think bipolar disorder is a perfectly good reason to decline an application without studying medical records or determining the extent to which bipolar is actually affecting a person’s life. I think that most with bipolar would guess that is held in common. How about life insurance companies think the risk of suicide is too high so they don’t want to approve insurance based on that?
Depending on where someone starts out their life insurance adventure, if bipolar is in the picture no matter how well controlled, it can be a humiliating, degrading experience. I have seen clients declined for life insurance for taking the drug Lamictal. True enough it is used to treat bipolar disorder, but it is also used to treat depression and in some cases seizure disorders. Without ever determining the cause for the use of the drug this person was dished out a decline.
Even if it had been bipolar disorder, there was no effort on the part of the company to determine how mild or severe the disorder was and if it, in fact, had any real impact on the person’s day to day life. The truth is that I work with people all the time in positions of responsibility who have learned to do life just fine with bipolar in the background. The other truth is that we have found several life insurance companies who recognize that the mortality risk is just not that great in many of those instances.
Bottom line. What do they have in common? With the right agent it could be approvals and competitive rates. Time to rethink this whole thing.
- Life Insurance Companies All Over The Map On Mood Disorders!
- Life Insurance Underwriting Of Seizure Disorders!
- A Little Bipolar Myth Busting!
- Bipolar Seeking Good Life Insurance Rates?
- Mild Depression A Life Insurance Issue?
Entry Filed under: Depression, bipolar disorder, decline, insurance, life insurance, seizure disorder
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