Archive for May 13th, 2009
If you only had a crystal ball, right? If you knew when you were going to die you could put off buying life insurance right up to the last moment, or if you knew you would outlive the need for life insurance you could just not buy at all.
Well, unless you are terminally ill or have some tried and true hooey wooey visionary way of knowing when the end might come, you are forced to deal with statistics and mortality assumptions. How many times have I heard, “The insurance company is betting I’m going to live and if I buy life insurance I’m betting that I’m going to die”?
Well, let’s be really up front and fair here. The life insurance company does believe you are going to live or they wouldn’t sell you the insurance. Duh!! But does that mean they don’t pay out on tens of thousands of claims every year that were the result of unexpected deaths? If you’re a male between age 25 and 64 the life insurance companies will be right most of the time, but 1 in 6 times they won’t be. That’s right. When you reach age 25, 1 in 6 of you won’t see age 65. If you’re female 1 in 9 of you won’t make it that far.
Let’s say for a minute that car insurance wasn’t mandated by law, completely voluntary. If you knew that the chances were randomly 1 in 6 that you would total your car I’m thinking most of you would carry comp and collision anyway.
Let’s look at it another way. That TV show about 6 degrees of separation is probably overkill in this discussion. I suspect that very few adults can say that they didn’t personally know someone between 25 and 64 who died. Most of us know someone who died prematurely and didn’t have life insurance. We just had a woman in her 40’s die in a car accident last week and a man in his 50’s have a heart attack two days ago in our small town of 6000 people. The man is still alive, but is in critical condition and without a transplant isn’t expected to make it.
A young man in his 20’s who is an ongoing subject of prayer in a men’s group I attend has inoperable cancer. It really goes on and on and I don’t make these points to get people to buy something that is going to break the bank, or even their budget. I make these points so maybe someone will understand (that doesn’t already) that we have a good chance of living to old age, but we aren’t immortal. There is prudent reason to consider having life insurance. For all of those who I have delivered death benefit checks to, saying there is prudent reason would be considered an understatement.
Bottom line. Just food for thought. If there is someone in your life who is depending on you, make sure they really can depend on you.
May 13th, 2009
With most life insurance agents and most life insurance company underwriters, the mere mention of a history of seizure disorders or epilepsy is enough to bring the conversation and the application to a screaming halt. Not unlike a lot of the less common health issues, the agents don’t know what to ask and the underwriters don’t truly know how to assess the mortality risk or lack thereof.
A brief overview from the Epilepsy Foundation website tells us “Epilepsy is generally not the kind of condition that gets worse with time. Most adults who have it can expect to live a normal life span.” A normal life span? Isn’t that what life insurance underwriters are looking for? Lack of mortality risk? The answer is yes. Absent other health issues, if most adults who have epilepsy or other common seizure disorders can expect to live a normal life span, an expectation of paying no worse than standard rates is reasonable.
“Doctors treat epilepsy primarily with seizure-preventing medicines. Although seizure medications are not a cure, they control seizures in the majority of people with epilepsy.” I keep harping on what underwriters want to see when a person has a serious medical condition. It’s the same with diabetes, coronary artery disease or cholesterol. CONTROL AND COMPLIANCE!!! If you have epilepsy and are compliant with doctors orders, then you should have control. Good life insurance rates should follow control and compliance.
You need a good independent life insurance agent who doesn’t flinch when you mention epilepsy, but rather asks more questions like, “What medication you take? When were you diagnosed? How frequent are your seizures and when was you most recent seizure?, etc” If they head down that road with you, you are in the right office or on the phone with the right agent. If they don’t ask questions or don’t seem to have some working knowledge of your condition, keep on looking.
Bottom line. For most people with well controlled seizure disorders affordable life insurance rates are well within the realm of possibility. If that hasn’t been your experience consider the possibility that you may have put your trust in the wrong agent who led you to the wrong company.
May 13th, 2009
If anyone out there is suffering from the illusion that your medical records are accurate, let me clue you in. The chance that your records contain substantive errors is about 75%. The chance that your records are error free is within the margin of error for 0%.
Doctors and their staff maintain, and I use that word loosely, your records as if they are only for their use and will never be seen by anyone outside of their office. Given that point of view, things like updating family or social history, or asking you to review your records occasionally to help avoid errors, just aren’t in the cards. They just want to stuff it in there and get it back on the shelf.
Case in point is a client who quit smoking about a year and a half ago. He applied for life insurance and even though his labs showed negative for nicotine use, his records indicated that he was attempting to quit and having a very challenging time of it. This entry was 9 months after he had quit. The same entry under his social history was there from the year before. They never bothered to update the social history and he didn’t think, since they didn’t ask, to bring it to their attention. The life insurance underwriter deferred to the records and offered my client a smoking rate.
Once we found this error, a very common error of dragging information forward from one visit to the next without updating, he came across more errors. According to the family history both of his parents were deceased. This was news to him since he had just spent a weekend with them. The errors have now been corrected and we were able to get the smoking rate changed to non smoking and his parents are no longer dead.
Just like your credit record, your medical records need to be reviewed occasionally. It may not be the most exciting weekend activity you’ve ever come up with, but the longer errors are left alone, the less likely you will find them and the less likely that you can get them corrected. Doctors aren’t real big on correcting old errors when it is a you said/he said a long time ago situation. The best practice is to ask your doctor or nurse to scan or fax you a copy of the completed notes after any office visit. A fresh error is easily corrected.
Bottom line. Getting an error corrected mid underwriting is tough. Doctors don’t jump on these tasks as top priority. They also don’t like changing records because that is admitting that they did something wrong and they see malpractice written all over that admission. And underwriters, rightly so, are often a little skeptical about changes in records that occur during underwriting. They, depending on the error, might see it as a manipulation of the system to improve your perceived mortality risk.
May 13th, 2009
