Posts filed under 'Anxiety'
We have been blessed with a lot of success in helping those with well controlled bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder and depression, find life insurance companies who will, first and foremost, give them a fair hearing and secondly, make fair offers on coverage.
I was contacted recently by a person that had been diagnosed with cyclothymia, a mild form of bipolar disorder. At first, being unfamiliar with cyclothymia, as opposed to just bipolar 1 or bipolar 2, I immediately googled it which helped me to structure the wording of the email I sent out for trial offers. I didn’t cite Google, but was pleasantly surprised when an underwriting response from one of the life insurance companies included a definition from Google as part of their reason for offering preferred or preferred plus rates. The following is the response I received.
“Cyclothymia is a chronic bipolar disorder consisting of short periods of mild depression and short periods of hypomania (lasting a few days to a few weeks), …per definition in Google. Feel tentative Preferred Non Tobacco even the possibility of Preferred Best since description below implies good control with no major episodes.”
It is refreshing to me that underwriters are using all of the technological tools available to help them correctly assess mortality risk. While it may seem like a logical thing to do, the underwriter who actually digs and fits the pieces of the puzzle together is rare.
Bottom line. While I am excited because underwriters are starting to embrace technology, we should all be excited to see the words preferred and preferred best in the same sentence with bipolar disorder. All the pieces of the puzzle have to fit in order for that to happen, but it is attainable.
September 12th, 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
There must be a couple of million people in the US licensed to sell life insurance. If you take in the giant internet mega agencies, all of the independent agents, and all of the captive agents (work for just one company), the possibilities for purchasing life insurance become staggering.
Put in context, there are probably as many, if not more doctors. Does that mean that no matter what is wrong with you, there are 2 million choices for a place to go for treatment? I’m thinking not. If you have a cold, a cardiologist is likely not going to see you, and if you’ve had a heart attack, it’s highly unlikely that your general practitioner won’t refer you to a specialist. There are those unfortunate times when GP’s think they know the answer to everything and attempt to treat serious illness in house, but those are rare.
Life insurance is one of those areas where the millions of choices doesn’t mean you have millions of appropriate choices. For the average very healthy person under 50 probably any independent agent or agency can do a good job of finding a low rate with a good company. As I’ve mentioned before, young healthy buyer beware though. Even though the mega agencies on the internet can find competitive rates, they have a bad habit of signing lucrative bonus contracts to push the bulk of their business toward a certain company. The good news is that the company is generally competitive. The bad news is that, as I’ve noted in so many previous posts, competitive doesn’t mean best. An independent agent doesn’t do the volume and therefore we are never offered these type of contracts. Speaking for myself, I place every case with the best possible price and product for my client. Seems like the right thing to do.
One other note on our perfect health client. Stay away from your auto and homeowner’s agents. You will be outrageously overcharged for life insurance because it isn’t what they do. Sure, they have a product and they are licensed, but having a license doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing and having a product doesn’t mean the price isn’t way too high.
But I want to make a very important distinction. Just like the doctor scenario, if you have some medical issue, a knowledgeable independent agent is where you want to go. We are the specialists in the life insurance business. Just a quick list of what I am talking about will help separate the GP’s from the specialists. If you have diabetes, Hepatitis C, heart disease, a history of cancer, a seizure disorder, mood disorders such as depression, anxiety or bipolar, and on and on. These are issues that it is hard for the average agent to provide good service on. These are issues that will get automatically declined with most property casualty companies (auto, homeowners).
How do you know you’ve called the right person or stepped in the right door? All insurance agents make money from the culmination of a sale, the placing of a policy in force. They all want your business and the truth is that most of them are struggling. There is a real tendency in the business for agents to take on business that they have no idea what to do with, just in hopes that it works out. It usually doesn’t. You know you’ve found the right agent if they show a knowledge of your particular issue by the questions they ask. If they don’t ask questions they don’t have the information it takes for them to come through for you. If they don’t seem to know, for instance, the difference between type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes, they don’t have any business working for you.
Bottom line. Before you commit to applying through an agent, be confident that they know what they’re doing. In my next post I will reveal the secret weapon for weeding out the BSer’s from the straight shooters. It works every time, guaranteed.
May 28th, 2008
I don’t know that I was shocked, but certainly took note the other night when, unless my memory is as bad as my wife says, I saw an advertisement for bipolar disorder medication during prime time.
The medication is Abilify and I am not posting this to endorse it or make any claim at all about its’ effectiveness. I will offer one article just so anyone that hasn’t heard about it has a base to start their investigation from. I did want to note that, just like hearing for the first time that life insurance is attainable for someone with bipolar disorder, there is a sort of “out of the closet” feeling to seeing it recognized as something that can be talked about openly.
The other end of the scale which I doubt we’ll see was America’s fond embracing of “ED” problems and the associated medications. Depression and medications for it have been advertised for years without going over the deep end. It has helped to raise awareness of depression and anxiety disorders. I hope that it can do the same for bipolar disorder.
We continue to experience success in placing reasonably priced life insurance cases for folks with well controlled mood disorders, whether anxiety, depression or bipolar. This is huge. If there was some way to quantify the number of people who are declined annually just for mentioning these types of issues on their application I have not doubt it would be huge. Staggering. And the crime (although it’s not really a crime) is that many companies will simply decline these cases off hand without getting medical records or any additional background information.
What we’ve found is that the few reasonable companies that employ the few reasonable underwriters in the business are actually doing their job. They are underwriting rather than offering knee jerk opinions, or buckling to a board of directors who have laid out a clear agenda of not insuring anyone who isn’t perfect in every way. The real blessing is that there is reasonable out there and it can be obtained.
Bottom line. We’ve had great success given a few parameters. Obviously it would be a case of adverse selection to offer good rates to those who are truly on the edge, hanging on to life by a frayed thread. But for those who have a history of keeping it together, being compliant with medication and treatment, and maintaining stable family and work lives, the door is open.
May 20th, 2008
This is a stressed out world we’re living in and it would be highly unlikely that you don’t know someone suffering from either anxiety or depression, and not too unlikely that the someone could be you. The more pressure the world exerts, the more likely that our coping mechanisms are going to need some help.
From a life insurance underwriter’s point of view, if the anxiety or depression is mild to moderate and a person is compliant with treatment and stable, rates as good as preferred are not out of the question. I have run into more and more people who are treated for both, but again, given the criteria above an underwriter would not likely pile up on a person due to “multiple impairments”.
I read an article just recently that suggested that rather than anxiety and depression being two distinct disorders, that in many it seems that the two impairments are really just separate manifestations of the same disorder. There appears, in fact, to be a genetic link between the two.
As we’ve discussed on a number of occasions, no matter what the impairment, from depression to anxiety to bipolar disorder, life insurance can still be attainable if your life can be characterized as stable. I’ve taken a bit of a beating over one of the other underwriting criteria that goes along with mood disorders, the fact that you can’t be on disability due the impairment. I’ve had several people cry foul on that guideline, but let’s be real. If you are functional and stable, you shouldn’t need to be on disability.
The best demonstrators of functional and stable are family and work life, and no recent hospitalization due to the impairment. Attempted suicide really throws a damper on the whole thing.
Bottom line. A good independent agent knows what to ask and how to present it to provide you with the best possible chance of getting affordable life insurance. Don’t try this with your local State Farm agent unless you feel like racking up a decline or two before you finally find approval.
May 19th, 2008
I was recently contacted by a person who had been declined by an insurance company (pretty much an every day occurrence here). This person had been treated for depression for quite a while, but successfully treated.
The person was leading a normal, stable life. Family, job, the whole thing has gone on without a hitch for the past several years. The hitch (for the insurance company) was that a few years ago this person’s doctor switched her to a medication generally only used for bipolar disorder. Not that it’s not effective for depression, because it is, but this person being on Lamictal led the insurance company to decline the application without ever pulling medical records. A bipolar drug was enough for them to freak out and go screaming into the dark.
It is this underwriting mindset that leaves so many people in this country believing that they are uninsurable when, with the right independent agent and the right companies, that conclusion could not be any further from true.
I think to a very large degree it is the average life insurance agent out there that is the problem. They know how to pitch the product and fill out applications. When they are lucky enough to find a completely healthy client, place a policy and get paid, they believe they are in fact a life insurance agent.
It is this same lame excuse for an agent who will pitch the product and fill out the application and submit it, not knowing what question Lamictal might raise, that really messes up the business and gives a lot of people the idea that life insurance companies are unfair. Anytime there is a chance that an underwriter might do the unexpected, the case should be shopped. Lay it all out there and let the underwriter with his or her head screwed on right win the day. Take the business where they have already heard the details and know that there is more to the story than what appears on the cover.
Bottom line. Depression, anxiety and bipolar are all issues that, as long as they are well controlled and properly shopped, can produce very positive results for the person wanting fair rates on their life insurance. How do you know if the agent you are dealing with is the right agent? How do you know they have a clue? Ask them questions about your issues and see if they understand them. Quiz them about their success rate on those kind of issues. Don’t just listen to the pitch, throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.
May 9th, 2008
I wouldn’t presume to beat a dead horse, but so seldom is there any significant shift in life insurance underwriting that it bears as much good press as it can stand. While life insurance companies have, for a long time, been fairly tolerant of mild situational depression, many companies are now taking a new look at what used to be a group of automatically declined mood disorders.
I have gone on and on about the results we are getting with well controlled bipolar disorder. Bipolar still leaves the majority of underwriters running, screaming into the dark. Then there is a group of companies that has taken pause to look at the whole issue from a new direction. What if this person really is a functional, stable member of society? What if they really have a track record of compliance with treatment and what if they haven’t been in and out of the hospital? What is the real risk?
Anxiety disorders and long term depression are getting the same fresh look from these companies. By the way, these companies are some surprising new upstarts that are going out on a limb. This is the same group of companies that have led for years in underwriting difficult issues such as diabetes, epilepsy, heart disease, etc. They are on the cutting edge of prudent, fair underwriting. They are the companies that are making a difference in groups of people that have been shunned for a long time.
Bottom line. Spread the word. Fair rates are available for the less than perfect insurance risk. You and I may not get the rates we see splashed on TV, but in most cases we shouldn’t be looking a decline letter either.
April 14th, 2008
40 years ago it was a rare thing to hear of someone who was on medication for depression. Of course back then people really didn’t talk about “those kind” of problems very openly. Treatment options were generally restricted to visiting a psychologist, therapist, or psychiatrist.
Now conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety are talked about and blogged about and the medications are more commonly known than most medications for cholesterol or back pain. I doubt if many of us don’t know someone who is taking Prozac, Zoloft or Paxil for depression. There’s plenty of anxiety to go around making us familiar with Xanax or Buspar. Most people are familiar with Lithium as a treatment for bipolar and more than you might think are aware that anti-seizure medication like Depakote is a common medication for controlling the manic/depressive symptoms.
Anxiety and depression have probably always been around and are now more openly discussed and fortunately more quickly diagnosed and treated. If someone with a mood disorder is compliant with today’s treatments, very often even their closest friends may not know what they are dealing with.
How do life insurance companies view the conditions and medications? You should know by now that I always start with what an underwriter looks for first. Compliance and control!!! Are you following the doctors orders and do you have control? In this case control would be defined as being able to carry on both a work and family life in a stable way.
Just a note about depression. There is an underwriting difference between situational depression and chronic depression. If someone close to you dies, depression is a normal response and would be considered situational. Generally treatment doesn’t last for years as a person adjusts to the loss or whatever the situation was. Chronic depression may or may not be brought on by a particular situation, but is often continually treated for years, if not for the rest of a person’s life.From an underwriting standpoint, a situational depression may receive more favorable underwriting, but both types of depression can be underwritten at better than standard rates, often preferred rates, as long as compliance and control are present.
Anxiety disorders are practically as common as headaches in our society and personally I understand why. I live in a small town because the big cities make me anxious. I don’t like being there. I don’t like driving there. I don’t know people who live in cities cope with it. Again, anxiety disorders are looked at the same. With the medication can a person function well? Are they compliant and is their condition under control?
Bipolar is underwritten with basically the same pattern. I should add here, and this goes for depression and anxiety also, if you are on disability due to the problem, that is not considered good control. If you are occasionally hospitalized, that is not good control. If you have attempted suicide, well, are you seeing the pattern?
Bottom line Better than standard and even preferred rates are attainable with mood disorders if you use the right independent agent. Control is the key.
April 3rd, 2008
I know I’ve been beating this drum quite a bit, but the word needs to get out. Having bipolar disorder is not the frosting on a decline cake if you need life insurance. Can everyone qualify for good life insurance rates with bipolar? I won’t even tell you that everyone can be approved, but given certain criteria, a lot of people who have been declined in the past, can be approved and at very good, better than standard rates.
Obviously, like depression or anxiety disorders, there are extremes when it comes to bipolar. And let’s be blunt. It ranges from mentally ill and disabled to completely normal and stable. There are a huge number of people with bipolar who’s best friends wouldn’t know it if they weren’t told. Which brings us to the criteria for finding and locking in good rates for life insurance.
Stability is the key. For obvious reasons life insurance companies see a larger than acceptable mortality risk in someone with bipolar who hasn’t figured out how to control it and become functional and stable. So, guideline #1 for good rates is you can’t be on disability. If you are disabled by your bipolar, that kind of rules out functional and stable.
#2 is that, other than for the purposes of diagnosis, you shouldn’t have had any bipolar related hospitalization in at least the last 10 years, and #3 is, at least I think, very obvious. No suicide attempts.
With all of the no’s out the way, let’s get to what underwriters really want to see. Compliance and control. Compliance is documented in your medical and psychiatric records. How well have you compllied with your treatment? Do you just take medication when you feel like you’re losing a grip, or do you take it as prescribed? Do you see your attending doctor as scheduled, or do you just go in if you have to refill a prescription?
And very important. Is your family, work and community life stable? We are finding huge numbers of people with bipolar who have been declined simply because they “have it”, without anyone ever looking at their life and finding out they have things under control as well, if not better than, most of us. We have found great insurance rates for CEO’s with bipolar, community leaders with bipolar, and solid family people with bipolar.
Bottom line. 99% of life insurance companies will go screaming into the dark if you tell them you are bipolar. The other 1% seriously look at you and weigh the risk. The only way to that 1% is through an independent agent.
March 11th, 2008
There are times when I wonder how any one in this world can live without have some degree of anxiety. I know I was just a kid back, but I don’t remember the 50’s and 60’s, or for that matter the 70’s being overly stressful.
Then came the 80’s with high interest, AIDS, and a host of other social issues that seemed like they were starting to tighten the screws just a bit on our relaxed lives. It was about that time that people started working longer hours, divorce started to skyrocket, and generally the stress of everyday life started becoming, well, anxiety producing. And it hasn’t let up.
Against that backdrop comes a study that indicates that anxiety is a stand alone risk factor for heart attacks. In a nutshell, all things being equal, a man who is suffering from chronic anxiety is 30-40% more likely to have a heart attack than someone who thinks happy thoughts. And that was for men who were in the top 15% of the scales they used to measure anxiety for this study. The higher a man’s score, the higher the likelihood that it could lead to cardiac issues.
It’s important to note that in this context, anxiety isn’t about being a little anxious or nervous, but rather a true anxiety disorder that manifests itself on several deep and serious levels.
Anxiety disorders and depression are looked at by life insurance underwriters in much the same way as bipolar disorder. Remember that the criteria for finding the best rates are that a person hasn’t been hospitalized in at least the last 10 years for the disorder, they’ve never attempted suicide, aren’t on disability due to the condition, are compliant with treatment, and are stable and functional. Maybe we should add that they haven’t had a recent stress related heart attack.
Bottom line. Our bodies and physical and emotional health are all interwoven far more than we can imagine. Stress, anxiety or depression, left unchecked can ruin our lives emotionally, and now we know that it can just flat out end our lives with a heart attack.
February 5th, 2008
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