Archive for June 8th, 2009
Usually the first shot in the arsenal of ways to deal with type 2 diabetes is diet and exercise. The great thing if it works is that the diabetes can be controlled or beaten, a life style changed, and absolutely no negative side effects.
The American Heart Association has released guidelines for exercise for those with type 2 diabetes that look strangely similar to the guidelines they recommend for everyone else who wants to stay heart healthy. The difference is in the urgency. 70% of deaths in type 2 diabetics are heart related. It is a disease that just takes no prisoners among those who don’t fight back.
I’ve shared in previous posts how our current economy is hitting those with chronic diseases hard, often leading to self adjusting medications to keep the cost down. The two and a half hours of moderate exercise that the AHA recommends weekly is a free way to take back some of the control that the recession has taken away. With obesity being the leading cause of type 2 diabetes and heart disease being the leading cause of death from type 2, obviously anything that can be done to work on weight and strengthen your cardiovascular system is going to be in your favor. The truth is that if you can manage to take control of the obesity issue, you can often kick the need for diabetes medicine altogether.
One of the biggest concerns with diabetes is its’ progression, both where it comes from and where it leads to and the mortality risk associated with the health issues along that whole path. If in the beginning is obesity, then underwriters are not only looking at diabetes, but a host of other health issues including heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and cancer. On the other end of the journey uncontrolled diabetes can cause kidney damage, eyesight problems and heart disease.
Having said all of that it’s hard to imagine that anyone with type 2 diabetes would be approved at all for life insurance, but like most chronic diseases, if well controlled and taken seriously, the mortality risk and risk of complications is dramatically reduced. For the best underwriting success with diabetes an underwriter would like to see onset after age 50, an A1c of 6.5 or under, and no other collateral health issues. Very often this can mean standard or better rates are available. If a person is age 60 and has had diabetes for 5 years or less, at least one company has indicated their best rate class is available.
Bottom line. Just like everyone has been telling us forever, eat right and get plenty of exercise. The benefits go way beyond good life insurance rates with demonstrable changes in health and lifestyle making quality of life what we really all wish it would be.
June 8th, 2009
A life insurance decline doesn’t do anyone much good. The client doesn’t get the insurance and the agent and company spend time and money getting to that conclusion and lose money because nothing is ever purchased.
Just so no one thinks I’m starting out Monday morning with a little whine, let’s separate those declines into two categories. The first decline comes when lab results come back from the exam with unacceptable readings that neither the insured or the agent knew ahead of time would be there. For instance, if a person’s PSA was out of the normal limits, an application would be declined or at least postponed until prostate cancer is ruled out. If an applicant’s cholesterol was 380 on the exam they would likely be declined until they were examined and treated and the value was substantially lower. A decline for something that was unknown by the applicant may speak to their lack of personal health care, but not to their integrity.
The other reason for a decline is generally due to information that was not divulged on the application or to the agent or to the examiner or to the company. This is information that is intentionally not shared in the hopes that it will not pop up from some source and they might get approved in spite of the fact that, in light of the information, they should be declined.
I’ve talked in the past about the initial interview I do with clients in which the health and life style questions all start with “Have you ever been diagnosed with or treated for?? – Have you ever participated in?? – Have you ever been rated or declined for insurance??” Have you ever? Not talking about this week or last week, last year, within the last 5 years or 10 years….the question is “Have you ever?”
When we get a couple of weeks or a month into an application and get information from medical records or from the Medical Information Bureau (MIB) that results in a decline, or we find out that the applicant was declined recently for a condition that they were completely aware of, and it was just never shared with anyone, it’s either an attempt to defraud or the person somehow didn’t understand the verbal questions from the agent and examiner and the written questions on the application.
In contrast to these blatant wastes of time and money are those clients who fully disclose their history up front and open up the opportunity to shop it and discuss it with underwriters and determine what direction to go in to avoid the decline.
Bottom line. There was a time when auto insurance agents really didn’t run a MVR prior to binding the insurance policy and setting the rate. So, if they asked how many speeding tickets you had in the last three years and the honest answer was 5 and you told them 0, you got the rate for a safe driver. Insurance companies started getting more thorough than that 20 years ago and it seems like the public hasn’t figured out yet that half truths or lies will be uncovered.
June 8th, 2009
