Posts filed under 'BMI'
It’s been no secret since I followed the Biggest Loser reality series, that while the obesity and BMI challenged might pay a little more for their life insurance than folks that are under the BMI threshold for overweight, there are companies that do offer fair rates as long as there aren’t a bunch of other risk factors rearing their ugly heads.
A client just recently inquired and his build was 6′3, 325. He didn’t have any health issues. One of the best companies around for build is West Coast Life, but based on their underwriting take on this the $1,000,000 30 year term he wanted was going to be $3200+ annually, a budget buster. They stuck to their written guidelines and wouldn’t go better than a table C, which is 175% of the standard rate.
When I shopped it to Prudential, even though based on their guidelines it would have been about the same as West Coast Life, I got a refreshing answer from the underwriter. This underwriter knew the kind of issues to look for in someone who is overweight and they said they would go with a straight standard rate as long as:
“1. BP for last 12 months 130/85 or under
2. Fasting blood glucose 110 or under
3. Cholesterol 275 or under
4. HDL 40 or over
5. Chol ratio 7.0 or under.”
Well, he nailed it. His blood pressure was 110/68, glucose 79, cholesterol 168 and HDL 41 making his cholesterol ratio 4.1. I guess what struck me as refreshing about this whole scenario was that the underwriter wasn’t just throwing my client in a box with everyone of similar build. They started him in the box and told them what it would take to get out, and he did. Home Run!
Bottom line. Thanks to Prudential’s forward thinking underwriters my client is paying less than $1800 annually for the same policy that, best case, would have cost $3200 elsewhere.
March 20th, 2009
In reviewing my last post concerning some of the changes in underwriting of life insurance that occurred in 2008, I found some parallels between that and some of the most significant medical breakthroughs of the year. Could it be that underwriters are doing their homework?
From the discovery that BMI is not always a true indicator of the percentage of body fat and therefore not a good measure of diabetes risk, to the discovery that eating foods that contain “resistant starch” as a way to help fight obesity and bolster weight loss, medical researchers are, year by year, getting a better handle on how we can get a better handle on our health.
A clearer picture of treatment for type 2 diabetes came from one of the largest studies done so far. Critical in the findings is early detection through risk factor education. Discovered early and treated aggressively, type 2 diabetes doesn’t have to have to be the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Studies showed that combining treatment for diabetes with treatment for cholesterol, triglycerides and blood pressure gave better results than treating diabetes alone.
Breakthroughs in the detection and treatment of colon and breast cancer will likely prove to be a boost to 5 year survival rates. While not a guarantee of any immediate impact on life insurance underwriting, these are the types of things that help pick apart the “one size fits all” underwriting of the past. Simply put, it is becoming harder and harder to justify the same mortality assumption for someone who has done all the right things relating to early detection and proper treatment of cancer with someone who hasn’t.
Bottom line. Life insurance underwriting is constantly evolving and while the best rates out there will never be available for everyone, with the right independent agent using the right companies, a fair shake is a more likely outcome than ever.
December 29th, 2008
Today would be no exception to my rule that men really don’t see a world that has consequences until they are old enough that they see the consequences happening to others their own age, or even to themselves.
I spent part of yesterday evening in the emergency room with my nephew who had finally conceded that three hours worth of rapid heart beat (85-110) and high blood pressure (160/110 as measured at Walmart) was reason enough to see a professional. He is 38 years old and by his own admission, inactive and at 6′3, 250, overweight.
I cut him some slack last night, but today let’s discuss his experience. His self admission of being overweight was actually cutting himself some slack. He knows about body mass index (BMI) as well as I do and he knows that his build puts him solidly in the obesity category. “Overweight” is a way many of us use to gloss over the fact that obesity carries with it a number of potential health issues, only one of which became all to real to him last night.
As we waited for lab results and talked, he admitted that he hadn’t been to a doctor in three years. This is a guy who reads my blog and knows my opinion of guys (yes, including me) and their stupidity about their own health. He confessed that his real concern with the labs that were being worked on was that he would be found to have type 2 diabetes, one of the risks of obesity, a risk he knows about all too well because he is also a life insurance agent who works with diabetics frequently. He admitted that he has had concerns about his blood pressure because of his lifestyle. All that is to say that he was aware that he was probably due for some health problems.
My nephew was no different than my average client laying in the emergency room last night. He knew he has been heading down the wrong road for a while. He knew that, at some point, his lack of attention to his health could hurt him or kill him, yet he did very little to change that direction. He bought a bike that he doesn’t ride. He doesn’t like to walk, so he doesn’t. The only thing last night that set him apart from the average guy is that he went to the ER knowing that he has an adequate amount of life insurance in force.
So, why regular checkups? For my nephew, one good reason would be that he would be hearing from a professional that he was treading on thin ice with obesity, a recipe for disaster. For all of us it could well give us that advantage of an early diagnosis of something that can be serious left undetected. If we flip through life with our immortality shield up, never getting checkups, a heart attack could be how you find out you have heart disease or diabetes. A stroke could be the way we find out about hypertension, the silent killer. Regular checkups are wake up calls that don’t hurt.
Bottom line. Prayers were answered last night and my nephew, with a fresh look at life, should be fine. We should all work harder at being proactive about our health. There are people that would miss us.
December 14th, 2008
They’re the rates you see advertised all the time and they are definitely the rates that everyone would like to be paying for their life insurance coverage. But do you qualify?
First let’s dispel with a few old myths. Your age and the amount of insurance have nothing at all to do with whether you qualify for the best rate class. Being younger doesn’t make you better qualified and asking for more insurance doesn’t mean you are less likely to be approved for the best rates. What matters is your health history, your family history and your lifestyle.
Build matters. Every company has a build chart. 5′5″ and 160 pounds gets the best rates, 190 pounds doesn’t. 5′10″ and 190 pounds gets the best rates, 210 pounds doesn’t. Life insurance companies are more lenient than the standard BMI charts, but they are there and underwriters are serious about them. They know there is a link between obesity and any number of health issues with high mortality experience such as diabetes, heart disease or cancer.
Your lab results, both blood and urine have to be in the normal range. If you haven’t been to a health fair or had a physical with blood and urine profiles, you may be in for a surprise when you apply for life insurance. It is fairly common for people to discover their perceived perfection is flawed when they are faced with the reality of lab results. Cholesterol, liver functions and glucose (blood sugar) are just a few that pop up and surprise people.
Your family history matters. If you had a parent die before age 60 of a heart attack or stroke, underwriters aren’t going to lend a sympathetic ear to your tales of your parent’s lifestyle. They will look you straight in the face and tell you that in spite of the fact that your father weighed 400 pounds and smoked and drank and never exercised, they don’t have any proof that he wasn’t predisposed genetically to heart disease.
They will look at your driving record. They will ask about any past drug or alcohol treatment. They’ll ask about your hobbies and they, not you, gets to decide if it’s risky. They’ll ask about foreign travel and again, they decide if what you do is risky.
Bottom line. The best rates in life insurance are worth shooting for, but before you get your heart set on them you might want to have a serious talk with an independent agent and see if you are really going to stack up.
November 10th, 2008
If you talk to most life insurance applicants who fall into the obese or morbidly obese categories according the their BMI, they have usually been told that they aren’t insurable or that the prices are so high as to render uninsurable because they can’t afford it.
Let’s not dance around the subject. Life insurance underwriting is all about assessing mortality risk, your chance of dying compared to someone in average health. One of the things they consider are the risk factors that you have and the health issues you might, or in some cases are likely to acquire.
In the case of obesity, it is a known risk factor for high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes. So honestly it is not just the weight that impacts the outcome of the life insurance application, but the compounded perceived risk. Given the risk factors, while you may not agree when you have to pay higher premiums, life insurance companies are actually pretty generous with their build charts.
As I was running quotes for a person 5′11 and 395 pounds today, I was impressed by the fact that, number one, he was insurable and number two, while he may not be able to afford all he wants, he can still afford to make sure that his family is taken care of. Back when I did a series of blogs on the TV show Fat March, it generated a lot of attention to see the contestants on that show go from uninsurable to insurable, to great rates as their weight came down. Probably the most important aspect of that show and that series of blogs was the great discussion it generated over not just life insurance rates, but how life style changes could have such a huge positive impact on health and longevity.
Bottom line. If your only issue impacting life insurance at this point is weight, bite the bullet and find an independent agent to shop for the best possible rate for you. The picture isn’t going to get any prettier if you drag your feet and other health issues pop up and compound the issue. While there is a point where weight alone can keep you from getting traditional life insurance, chances are you aren’t there even if you’ve had a decline letter or two.
October 7th, 2008
I’ve often discussed the role that build charts play in the underwriting of life insurance. From an insurance point of view it’s as simple as this, trim is good and overweight is bad. Trim gets the best rates and overweight doesn’t.
For the purpose of this discussion we are talking about overweight as defined by the body mass index (BMI). We are not talking about the difference between a healthy weight according to the BMI versus obesity according to the BMI. So the question is does fitness compensate for fatness (overweight). A recent Harvard publication sheds a little different light on this question than may have been considered by underwriters in the past. Having said that it’s also important to remember that life insurance companies truly can’t afford to unravel every subtle difference between one insured and another. More on that in a minute.
So, the question in a little more detail is, from a long term health perspective, is slim but not fit better than overweight but fit? Let’s define fit as someone who exercises 30 minutes a day even if it’s just moderate exercise such as walking. Remember again, we are not talking about obesity. Obesity and especially morbid obesity by the very nature of the amount of extra weight make fitness a difficult if not impossible task without weight loss.
The findings of a 1998 study of 22,000 men, cited in the Harvard article, found that fit really did trump fat to some degree. In other words being thin and out of shape wasn’t better than being overweight and in shape. Their findings were summed up like this, “After eight years of follow-up, 428 of the men had died. Those who were overweight but deemed physically fit by their performance on the treadmill test were half as likely to have died as men who were lean but not fit. What’s more, death rates were virtually the same among fit overweight men and fit lean men.”
So, back to the underwriting dilemma I referred to above. Even though it seems obvious that the level of fitness is just as important, if not more important, than weight, the problem comes in finding an inexpensive way to measure fitness or assume fitness in the underwriting process. In the study all of the men’s fitness was measured by their performance on a treadmill stress test. Insurance companies underwriting costs right now very seldom leave room for insurance company profit for 3-5 years. A treadmill stress test would more than quadruple the cost of the average life insurance exam effectively making it unprofitable to provide. If it doesn’t make a profit, on average, a company can’t do it. And for all of you who just booed the life insurance companies making a profit, remember that they are the companies that are going to be cutting check for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to your beneficiaries. You want them to be profitable.
Having said all of that, there is the occasional underwriter who can be swayed a rate class if evidence of fitness is provided by the proposed insured. If this attempt is made it generally needs to be with information from the person’s medical records, not from the manager of the gym they purport to go to. So, if your medical records happen to contain a recent treadmill stress test, bring it to your independent agent’s attention.
Bottom line. Being fit. Being in shape from a cardiovascular standpoint will trump weight if you are concerned about your own health and your own longevity. For practical purposes it would probably be prudent not to go into the purchasing of life insurance assuming that your fit and fat argument will win the day.
August 26th, 2008
Everyone believes they should get the preferred plus rates that are advertised everywhere. “Di you know that John can have $500,000 of term life insurance for just $12 per month?”. The truth is that many qualify for those rates and get them, but for the average person with average health issues, we don’t.
Probably the quickest group to rebuff anything but a best rate approval on life insurance are those folks that are overweight and know they’re overweight, but simply don’t see it as an issue. It has been my experience that this group, more than any other, seems to have a firmer grasp on denial than most. They, inspite of knowing the link between obesity and other health issues, don’t believe it is fair for them to be charged more for life insurance than someone who is fit and taking care of themselves.
Now let me be clear about this. Using a body mass index calculator I appear to fall into the overweight category at 5′10 and 175#’s. But insurance companies aren’t abusive about the build issue. With most companies, even though I am clearly in the overweight category, would actually allow another 20#’s or so before they would bump me out of the best rates as long as I didn’t have any other health issues that would preclude that.
Having said that, 5′10, 220#’s is going to catch the prize with any company. They aren’t going to care if that is the same weight that you played football at in high school. They aren’t going to care if you work out five times a week or run five miles a day. They aren’t going to care if your health is perfect in all other aspects. Obesity is obesity and along with it comes substantially increased risk of health issues that have the ability to shorten your life span and assessing your mortality risk is what life insurance underwriters do.
So, the folks whose weight (or lack of height) doesn’t get them what they want, in general, will blow off whoever is honest enough to tell them what insurance will really cost, and go on to another agent. Many are apparently so offended, in my experience, by honesty that they will never return a call again. It’s as if I called them fat or ugly or something, when all I really did was gave them an accurate quote. To them, possibly it feels as though I am just one more person in their lives who is treating them unfairly.
I don’t know what is going through their minds really, because they don’t call back to discuss it.
The truth is that the rates are fair based on build and that evenly the morbidly obese can put together a plan of life insurance that should fit into their budget. The challenge is to get over the fact that weight is an issue and it’s not going to change and work with your independent agent to find the company and the plan that will work best for you. There is not a cookie cutter interpretation of the weight issue from company to company and there are good rates to be found.
Bottom line. With obesity ranking high among the leading causes of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer, underwriters can’t afford to ignore weight. Even if those health issues are currently present, you are at a greater risk than the average sized person of coming face to face with one, or more of them.
June 5th, 2008
