The Silent Killer Meets The Silent Crisis!!

A collosal coincidence! It turns out that about one third of all Americans, 65 million, have hypertension, defined as blood pressure of 140/90 or higher. We’ve discussed a number of times how high blood pressure can effect your life insurance rates and the dangerous collateral health issues it can bring on. The silent killer it’s called.

I read an aritcle by Linda Koco in National Underwriter today that points out that about one third of all American adults, 68 million, don’t have any life insurance. I beleive I remember from a previous post seeing a LIMRA International study that said that another one third are underinsured. This is called the Silent Crisis.

The fact that 2/3 of the adults in this country are uninsured or underinsured is probably something that rolls off of most people without much impact, even those that are uninsured or underinsured. The fact that 1/3 of them is hypertensive may not raise that many eyebrows either. That’s the problem!!

The impact of someone dying without life insurance is something that may go unnoticed as a stand alone incident unless you happen to know the family. It is devastating to the wife and children and financially impacts their extended family and community as others come to their aid to help plug the gap left because there was no insurance. A large wave in the family, a splash in the community and a mere ripple in the country. Hardly even noticed.

Until you start feeling all of the ripples from all of the uninsured and underinsured. Remember that 2 out of 3 deaths involve this group. In 2001 the average number of daily deaths in the US was about 6600, so 4400 were uninsured or underinsured. That means that over 1.6 million people annually are leaving families in dire situations by not having adequate life insurance.

After all of that buildup, you would think I was a politician about to launch into a suggestion that the government provide life insurance. I’ll bring that idea up when they have a $50 trillion budget surplus, but for now it honestly appears that the answer is that more people need to connect with more life insurance agents and take care of business. With the cost of life insurance at an all time low, there is simply no reason for these kind of statistics. Of that two thirds, I suspect that most…..yes most, of them spend enough money on entertainment, whether it’s movies, sports, or satellite TV, to adequately insure their family.

Bottom line. Life insurance agents need to do a better job of getting the word out about affordability and adults need to quit living like their death won’t have any impact. Boy, I really rattled on this time……..but the silence needs to stop.