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.