Posts filed under 'cholesterol'
There aren’t many weeks that go by without hearing from someone who has finally figured out that they should have life insurance…..because their own mortality has been flashed before their eyes. This can come in the form of losing a friend or loved one or perhaps being in an accident and coming out with that thought in your head that, “Oh my God, I’m alive and probably shouldn’t be”.
Those are the easy ones to deal with. A wake up call with no harm done. But all too often the wake up call is because of some dramatic change in our health. People who have been diagnosed with cancer or who have had a heart attack tend to have a sudden, often fervent desire to look into the life insurance that they have been ignoring for years. They realize that they have blown the chance at getting good rates on the protection they now want and are desperately hoping that somehow this one health scare will be looked at by life insurance underwriters the way one speeding ticket would be looked at by an auto insurance company.
We all look for those second chances in life. Unfortunately, when it comes to the best rates that a life insurance company offers, with serious health issues there really are no second chances out there. If you are easily jolted into action by something minor like your cholesterol being a little too high, or with a few companies, your slightly high blood pressure needing a little medical nudge to get back to normal, you’re still in the running. Just about anything more serious than that will bump you at least one rate class, if not more.
So, and this is what all Americans really want to know, how do you beat the system? First and foremost you need to have a serious talk with yourself about your responsibilities and how, even though you are young and healthy, if something happens you will have failed to take care of those who depend on you. Second, you need to get over (we’ve all been here) that young, healthy feeling of immortality. You may live to be 120 and you may die tomorrow or be diagnosed with a terminal illness next month.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that for healthy people life insurance is probably the least expensive insurance you will have in your portfolio. Get it while you’re healthy. Get it while you’re still a good deal.
Having said all of that, should people with health issues give up on owning life insurance? No! It will cost more than your completely, disgustingly healthy cousin, but for almost everyone it is still available and with the help of a good independent agent, you can get the job done.
Bottom line. Life insurance is a good deal for family protection even when you don’t qualify for the best rates. Where else can $50 or $100 a month buy your family hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of peace of mind? Look into it today.
July 9th, 2008
It is a common belief that a life insurance agent’s offer of an annual review of your policy is nothing more than a ploy to try to get you to buy more insurance. I know from experience with my own clients that many are so sales phobic that their honest belief is that any contact from us, including birthday greetings, is a sales pitch attempt in the making.
In spite of the fact that my clients were never “sold” to start with and in spite of the fact that I tell them I will stay in touch during the life of their policy, at least on an annual basis, I can tell from their reaction that they think I am up to something when I call and ask if any questions have come up or if there is any way I can be of assistance (change of beneficiary, payment plan, etc).
I’m not naive enough to believe that all agents are calling simply out of a desire to be of service, and I won’t tell you that, if asked, I won’t provide up to date quotes and provide a better policy given their current situation or additional insurance if they feel that is a prudent thing to look at. But the annual review or annual service call has importance even if nothing happens.
There are plenty of agents and agencies out there who will gladly sell you life insurance and never talk to you again, so if that is what you want, it’s available. But, just for a minute, let me suggest that there is truly a value added to your product when an agent is willing to stay in touch.
I generally send out a letter to my clients about six weeks before the anniversary of their policy. Attached is a sample. annual-review-sample-letter
This contains information that may prompt questions. Suppose, unlike the sample, the letter explained that you were in the 9th year of a 10 year term. It’s time to give some thought to what happens at the end of the 10th year and possibly will lead to questions about what options are available.
This letter is followed up about 10 days later with a call from me simply asking if they received the letter (if they didn’t, it could be that their address has changed and they forgot to inform me or more importantly the company), if any questions came up after reading the letter (like what is the conversion option?) or if there is any way I can be of assistance. Usually in the 5th year or so of the policy I ask if they are still comfortable with the amount of insurance and the term length.
It is not a rare occasion, even with annual review calls, that a client will kind of forget what they have and the reminder helps remind them of why they bought what they bought. I have a substantial block of private pilot clients and it’s amazing how many will forget that the reason they purchased the policy they did and the reason they purchased it through us, is that it covered their aviation practicies at a fair rate.
I also review each client’s situation annually before calling to see if there are ways to save them money. If, for instance, they were approved initially at a higher rate than expected due to elevated cholesterol on their exam, I bring that up. If they’ve worked on getting their cholesterol down to normal limits, it’s possible in many cases to get a new policy at a lower rate. If someone has indicated that they are trying to quit smoking, I make a note of that because if they do there is substantial money to be saved. For some, an improvement in health or a change in habit may mean that they can now afford a longer term without raising their premium.
Bottom line. Service has earned a bad reputation, probably from unscrupulous agents that want to sell you something new every year whether it is warranted or not. That is called “churning” and is illegal. Don’t be afraid to participate in an annual review. If it feels like a sales call you might want to chastise your agent for that. If it feels like service and value added, that’s exactly what it is.
July 3rd, 2008
I know at times I pour it on pretty thick about the whole lifestyle thing, but lifestyle simply cannot be overstated when it comes to its’ impact on life insurance underwriting.
As posts go this one is short and to the point. Through diabeticconnect.com I found a review of a book
that really puts the spotlight on the impact of lifestyle on health. Again, I would like to recommend Diabetic Connect as a resource. I mentioned in a post a few days ago that I believe they will be the new best advocate on the block for those with diabetes.
Bottom line. Positive lifestyle changes increase your chances of avoiding or controlling issues like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity or cholesterol. Avoiding or controlling those types of issues can only have one type of impact on life insurance rates….positive!
May 20th, 2008
Much has been made about cholesterol over the years. It went from an unknown quantity to a household word that carried with it the weight of heart disease and heart attacks. Who of has not seen a TV commercial with little pieces of plaque sticking together in an artery and we all know where that story is headed.
When you apply for life insurance and complete your exam, one of the lab results is your total cholesterol. Most companies want to see that number below 220 for consideration for the best rate class. Some want to see it below 205. The most lenient of the big companies has their standard set at 240.
In the whole scheme of things this would appear to be all over the map with nearly at 15% difference between the most conservative and most liberal underwriting. Where it is all brought back together is when HDL and LDL are considered, good cholesterol and bad cholesterol if you will. It is generally accepted that good cholesterol, in adequate quantities, trumps total cholesterol. A ratio of 5.0 or better is considered optimal from an underwriting standpoint, while there are a few companies that follow a more conservative 4.5. Putting that in context, if your total cholesterol is 200, a ratio of 5.0 would be accomplished with HDL of 40. In the attached labs from 2006 from one of my health fair visits, you see a total cholesterol of 156 with HDL of 44, for a 3.1 ratio.
hinerman-labs
A lower ratio like this can allow an underwriter to consider, for instance, a total cholesterol that would be over the normal guidelines. While they aren’t going to stretch those boundaries too far, a good independent agent will generally find an underwriter that understands the offsetting value of high HDL.
Bottom line. We’ve all heard that knowledge is power. Awareness of your health profile is power. Knowing where you stand with risk factors gives you the upper hand in beating the odds.
May 20th, 2008
Life style choices impact your health, the quality of the life you live and not so coincidently, the rates you pay for life insurance.
Choosing a healthy diet and regular exercise over obesity can avoid a host of complications that we’ve talked about so much in this forum. Avoiding the excesses when it comes to food or alcohol just make common sense when you look at the potential downside.
Sometimes it is a healthy lifestyle choice that can overcome family history. Being genetically predisposed to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes or heart disease can often be overcome by simply being proactive about those things that might lean you in those directions. Often it can be as simple as knowing what to monitor and then actually doing it.
As all of us over 50 well know, lifestyle decisions are easier to implement and ingrain when we are younger. I know I started running regularly in my late 20’s and really enjoy that portion of the day. If I hadn’t started so early and someone had suggested at say, 53, that I start running, it would have been physically and psychologically much tougher.
In an interactive New York Times article called a “Guided Tour of your Body” you can learn more about how to stay healthy as you mature. I found some great information in this one and hope some might be useful to you.
Bottom line. We may age gracefully, but eventually our parts wear out. Doing the right things earlier can help you avoid needless suffering and of course, won’t hurt your life insurance rates either.
May 13th, 2008
I have often suggested going to local health fairs as a prudent step for those who either can’t afford a physical with a blood workup or, like so many, can’t seem to find the time in their busy lives to sit in a doctor’s office for an hour past the appointed appointment time, only to sit in an exam room for another half hour and finally to have a doctor come in and chat for a few minutes and announce that he would like you to go the local lab where they will get blood specimens. Back to another waiting room.
Health fairs are cool. You get up on a Saturday morning and go, usually, to a local school where it appears every nurse in the county has shown up to draw blood. You don’t get the friendly chat with a doctor, but you also don’t sit and wait. My experience has always been in, do the business, and out in half an hour at the most. A few weeks later they send your results.
Below is the result of this years labs. Note that they also provide a review of your last labs done through them so you have a baseline. Yes, I know I missed a year. My wife and I were on a 10th anniversary excursion in 2007.
my-latest-labs
While they is some really great news. My PSA remains low and has actually gone down slightly. My glucose is well within normal limits so it would appear I may not be crashing in on diabetes, and I once again beat my wife on total cholesterol. I didn’t win that category by much though and her good cholesterol, HDL, was higher so her ratio was lower than mine.
The bad news came for me right at the bottom. My TSH was elevated two years ago and is significantly higher now, nearing twice the normal limit. So, what I ask is a TSH? Quoting from the handy “What the heck it that quide” sent with my results, it said “TSH (Thyroid Simulating Hormone) is the pituitary hormone that controls thyroid function…..when the thyroid gland is underproducing…..TSH increases. They actually used the word “failed”, but underproducing made me feel better while I called my doctor and asked for the first open appointment.
So, from a life insurance standpoint I am still a pretty acceptable risk. Great liver functions. Great cholesterol and gluocse. My alkaline phosphatase that was high two years ago is now normal.
Bottom line. The whole reason I beat this health fair drum is that it is an easy, inexpensive way to get a checkup that could catch something serious, early.
May 12th, 2008
It’s generally the drama of the week around here. Someone has applied for insurance only to find out that they are fatter than they thought, their cholesterol of blood pressure is higher than the guidelines because they never check it, or their rate is approved higher for any number of reasons. Almost all of the time the first reaction is to blow off getting the insurance until they fix the situation.
Is this the prudent way to go? After all, they are generally looking at locking in rates for 20 years, sometimes 30. I guess the easy answer is that unless they already have life insurance in force at better rates than what was just approved, then NO!!!!!
I’ll just make up a person to walk through this point. The person is fake. The numbers are real. Let’s say a person 52 years old has applied for $500,000 of 20 year term insurance. He currently doesn’t have anything in force. He believes he is in perfect health and fit as a fiddle, answers no to all the health and family history questions before applying and therefore is quoted the best rate class at $1140 annually. This is good stuff. That’s a lot of insurance for an old guy at a good rate with a long guarantee.
Then the exam comes back and his cholesterol is at 260. Everything else is perfect but his cheeseburgers have all gone to his veins. Now that policy is going to cost him $1360. He decides that rather than pay that higher rate, he is going to work on his cholesterol and reapply when it comes down.
Two problems run with that direction. Number one and forgive me, but this is kind of a passionate thing with me, the guy still doesn’t have any insurance. He’s now running around knowing that he has bucket loads of artery clogging cholesterol and he doesn’t have any insurance. Any of us who have been in the business for very long have received phone calls from the widows of these guys. They say they know he was working on an insurance policy and they want to know if it’s in force.The answer is of course no, and the reason she didn’t know that is that the guy was too ashamed to tell her that she wasn’t worth an extra $200 to protect.
The other problem is age and procrastination. Most guys don’t take care of stuff like this since they got me out of their life and they didn’t tell their wife. So, best case scenario, it takes two years to get his cholesterol back to best rate class and now he’s 54 and has been uninsured for two years, but he’s alive. The policy will now cost him $1355, so he didn’t save any money by putting his family at risk for two years.
Bottom line. This isn’t a contest to see who can get the best rates. It’s all about the fact that stuff happens and family bread winners die unexpectedly. So, my advice. If you don’t like the rate do to your weight or your cholesterol, put the coverage in force and get to work on the problem.
April 25th, 2008
I have often written about the surprises that come with life insurance exam results, from the fairly benign slight elevations in cholesterol to the alarming large elevations in PSA results. The surprise should really come as no surprise because the person who gets annual physicals is today, more the exception than the rule.
We all have busy schedules and for those without health insurance, the idea of “wasting” a few hundred dollars on a physical when we feel just fine just doesn’t seem to make sense. The problem is that the insidious side of health issues is that, quite often, you can feel just fine until you don’t and then it’s too late. Remember, with the big problems like cancer and heart disease, caught early is the key to beating it.
This is where health fairs bridge the gap. I know Colorado is not an exception and that health fairs are held all over the country. Their goal is to offer a way to skirt the excuses and get a health check that could find something early and help save lives. They generally happen on the weekend, away from busy schedules, and they run the gamut from free to cheap for a tremendous amount of information.
Next weekend is the health fair in our area and as always, my wife and I will attend. While I’m not shy about beating up the general population over their willingness to ignore annual physicals, the truth is that I am part of the general population. Our annual health fair has helped me to be more proactive about health where I too would be among those who really don’t want to shell out hundreds of dollars for blood tests.
Bottom line. Feeling good and being healthy aren’t necessarily synonymous. An annual checkup is a great idea and with health fairs, schedules and economics don’t have to be barriers. Don’t get surprised on a life insurance exam when you can be on top of things and know going in what the state of your health really is.
April 13th, 2008
In a post some months ago I was sharing some of my new found knowledge about ultra fast CT scans and their viability and dependability in detecting clogged arteries in the heart. Just to refresh a bit, the ultra fast CT scan hangs it’s hat on the ability to detect calcification in the veins and arteries.
The problem has been that the heavily marketed test
doesn’t seem to be as accurate as it’s wealthy marketers would like everyone to believe. The life insurance case I was working on at the time involved a person who had a very high calcification score, but after a complete cardiac workup including a catheritization, he was given a clean bill of health. The score was high but there was no clogging of the arteries happening.
That was kind of the big rub. The test is touted as a non invasive procedure to detect coronary artery disease, but its’ inherent inaccuracy leads to invasive procedures to determine if the results were accurate. Dr Joseph Mercola kind of summed up one view of this whole thing on his website, www.mercola.com, like this. “Every time a new non-invasive heart test is invented, it is hailed as bringing us one step closer to the day when invasive tests will no longer be necessary. And yet, as time goes by and the new non-invasive test comes into common use, more and more invasive tests end up being performed. This is not a mysterious or inexplicable result. It is entirely predictable.
So now I am working with a client who has high cholesterol and LDL rates and has an ultra fast CT scan result that has a calcification score of 0. Nada! I shopped this for him, and the companies that ripped the other client up due to his high score, refused to give any credit to this poor fellow with a score of 0. Not too surprising, the one company that discounted the impact of the first guy’s high score, gave this client credit for his low score. A thinking underwriting team. Keep those people on the payroll!
Bottom line. The test still hasn’t been scored when it comes to ultra fast CT scans. Before plopping down the hundreds it takes to get one you really should do some homework.
April 9th, 2008
Over the years I believe I have heard most, if not all, of the whining responses from people who, after an exam and a review of their medical records, didn’t get the best rate available on life insurance. Don’t get me wrong. I want those rates also. But hear me clearly, I don’t qualify for them. Therefore I don’t deserve them and I don’t try to blame someone else for my imperfect health or family history.
If insurance companies didn’t draw the line in the sand somewhere, everyone would get the best rates and the risk pool would out of balance and insurance companies would go broke. While it is not uncommon for someone who is completely healthy to let their life insurance lapse, if someone with acknowledged health issues got the best rate, the likelihood of a lapse would be substantially less. The company is then left holding the lower end of the risk pool at the higher end of the rate classes.
I am the first to defend and go to battle with insurance companies if they bump someone a rate class and there is truly no discernable risk increase. A case just recently is a good example of this. The cholesterol guidelines for the best class with ING Reliastar up to age 70 are 220 total cholesterol and a total cholesterol/hdl ratio of no more than 5.0. My clients numbers came back at 227 total and 4.95 ratio. So, a little over on the total and a little under on the ratio.
I would have discussed this with the underwriter anyway, but notice those are the guidelines through age 70. My client is 70 so technically falls in those guidelines. But my client is actually only 5 months from being 71. At age 71 ING’s guidelines change to a max total cholesterol of 280 and a ratio of 6.5. My question to the underwriter was simply, if both of those quidelines are reflective of the actual preferred plus risk, isn’t there some logic that would say that this client may be in a very rare gray area and worthy of another look. To their credit they reopened the door to preferred plus rates and as long as his medical records don’t pose any further issues, he should qualify.
Back to the title of this post though. You don’t deserve it! You know it! Quit whining! If you are obese, don’t whine because you don’t get the rates you see on TV ads! If you have a family history of parents dying prior to age 60 of heart attacks (and especially if you are finally doing the math and figuring out that you are approaching the age of their death), don’t whine because you don’t get the best rate. If you have had cancer and it is in remission or even cured, don’t whine when the best rate available is standard or standard plus. If your liver functions are out of whack on your exam, don’t try to pin it on a bad blood test (unless everything else is out of whack and you have a retest to show that our result was wrong).
Bottom line. If it was easy to get the best rates, the best rates would have to be much higher for the companies to survive. If you don’t like the rate you approved at, don’t whine. Do what it takes to change the information that drove the rates higher.
March 16th, 2008
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