Can I Get Life Insurance With A Heart Condition Or Heart Disease

heart disease life insurance - man and woman togetherIf you haven’t personally experienced the trauma of a heart attack or being told that you have a life changing heart condition, like me, I’m sure you know someone who’s had one of those experiences. If you, or they, hadn’t considered it before the event, life insurance suddenly takes on new meaning.

Part of that “ah ha” moment about life insurance is going to be considering how easy it could have been to get it when your health history was unblemished. The other part is how hard will it be to get life insurance now with your heart being front and center in your new health history. So, let’s dig into that subject and come up with a plan that will get you the life insurance you need at a price that won’t cause another cardiac event.

Heart Disease And Life Insurance

There are more heart conditions than I can cover in one blog post, so let’s focus on heart disease, coronary artery disease and heart attacks. Heart disease is discovered in one of three ways:

  1. You have stress test as part of a physical and abnormalities point to blockage in coronary arteries.
  2. You experience angina, chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart.
  3. You have a heart attack that occurs when blood flow becomes severely restricted or completely blocked, causing damage to the heart.

Each of those experiences will have a medical response:

  1. That potential blockage, if mild to moderate, may be treated with plaque fighting drugs and probably aspirin. If the stress test shows moderate to severe blockage you will likely have a heart cath to investigate the blockage and you may have a stent placed in the blocked artery to open it back up.
  2. If you’ve gone to the ER experiencing angina they will perform a heart cath and most likely place one or more stents in whatever arteries ere affected.
  3. If you have a heart attack that usually means that one or more arteries were almost, if not completely, blocked. Depending on the extent and areas of blockage you may have a heart cath with stents or you could have bypass surgery where they place a new artery in your heart to bypass the blocked artery.

I’ve probably just reviewed information you may already know, but each of those possibilities leads to the information and documentation you will need in order to successfully apply for life insurance. This is the homework part that separates you from those who don’t have a good outcome after a heart event.

Listen To Your Doctor!

There is no quicker way to have a bad life insurance application experience than not being compliant with your cardiologist. If your cardiologist prescribes medication, take it. If it causes side effects that are a problem, don’t just stop taking it. Talk to your cardiologist and they can find an alternative medication. Be compliant with your doctor’s recommendations. If your cardiologist wants you to have followup testing, schedule it and do it within the time frame recommended. Ignoring the recommendation or not doing the testing is not being compliant with your doctor. These things are important for your health and recovery, but they are also important because not being compliant will lead to your life insurance application being declined.

Getting Approved For Life Insurance

So you’ve got heart disease and maybe you’ve even had a heart attack. Let’s lay out the steps you need to follow in order to get approved, and remember, get approved at a price that won’t cause another cardiac event. In scenarios 1 and 2 we can get started right away. If you had a heart attack (3) then we can get started when you have completed an imaged stress test after the stents or bypass. This is usually done about six months post surgery and is critical in underwriting because it tells how your heart is doing and how much damage was done.

So, this is the homework that you need to do. If this whole adventure started with a stress test then I need a copy of the narrative summary of that stress test. If that led to a heart cath I need the narrative summary of the heart cath procedure. If stents were placed I need a summary noting how many stents and where they were placed. I need a complete list of medications and any recommended upcoming testing.

 

In the case of a heart attack I need the narrative summary of the surgery and the narrative summary of your first follow up stress test.

Why All Of That Information?

If you’re young and don’t have any health issues you can just apply with any of the better companies and get approved at a great rate. If you have health issues like we’re discussing here then the road to your best possible life insurance outcome is the result of an agent shopping your information through a lot of companies. Not all companies will treat your heart condition the same and to further complicate things, I can’t count on a company treating your situation the same way they treated a similar situation a month ago. I shop every case, every time and the information you gather for me helps me ensure that all of the underwriters that review your case have all of the information they need. This is my way taking surprises out of the equation. It helps me help you.

What is Guaranteed Acceptance For Heart Disease?

There are times when you just can’t get approved. Examples would be chronic heart disease that results in multiple heart attacks or developing heart disease at a young age. Another instance where approval may be tough is if you have a combination of risk factors such as diabetes and heart disease. While I will exhaust every resource I have to get you approved for traditional life insurance, guaranteed acceptance or guaranteed issue life insurance is always available and will always be approved. That is the upside to guaranteed acceptance. The most important thing to understand with guaranteed acceptance is that there will be a 2-3 year period when your beneficiaries won’t receive the death benefit if you pass away. They will receive all of the premiums that have been paid, plus interest. After that waiting period the policy pays the full death benefit.

There Is Good News

Hinerman Group has a strong track record of finding affordable life insurance for people like you who have had a health curve ball thrown your way. We know the companies and we know the underwriters that we work with, and just as importantly, they know Hinerman Group. If you’ve been thrown a heart related curve ball, contact us now and let’s put together a game plan to get affordable life insurance as soon as we can.

 

 

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