The most common type of cancer among men and women is skin cancer. By far the majority of those cases are rarely life threatening types like basal cell carcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma.

The least common of the three is the most feared and has one of the highest mortality rates of any kind of cancer, melanoma. While history of the first two types is pretty easy to get good life insurance rates on, when melanoma jumps into the picture, well, the picture changes.

Like all cancer the underwriting gets tougher as the stage and grade of the cancer get higher. The best possible situation whether it is melanoma or breast cancer is a stage 0 insitu where the cancer is fully encapsulated. I recently shopped a stage 0 melanoma and got two offers better than standard on a cancer diagnosed less than a year prior.

Generally with anything higher than a stage 0 there would be a minimum one year post treatment before any offer was made and depending on the stage and grade, it could easily be a highly rated policy for several years after that. That highly rated period depends on the type of cancer as well as the stage and grade.

Bottom line. With this case we are headed for final underwriting and it appears our trial offer will be met and a standard plus rate offered. If you have a history of melanoma and want to see what kind of rates are available, make sure you have the stage and grade memorized and even better, a copy of the pathology report for your agent to work with. You may be pleasantly surprised.