Type 1 diabetes and life insurance!

Type 1 diabetes, often call juvenile diabetes, has had a rough road with life insurance underwriters over the years. There has been a recent shift toward what is call “clinical underwriting” that has brought the type 1 diabetic issue into a fairer light.

Type 1 or type 2 diabetes can both have severe collateral effects on the body if not well controlled. Type 1 diabetes always concerned underwriters more because with more years to work on the body and cause collateral issues, the chances seemed greater that the disease could have a negative impact on mortality, the very basis for life insurance quotes.

The shift in underwriting has come with the realization that well controlled type 1 diabetes has a much lower chance of causing collateral health issues and therefore has a very small impact on mortality expectations. That leads to lower life insurance rates.

 What do underwriters look for? An A1C of under 7, under 6.5 would be optimal. A person who takes their diabetes management seriously, checking glucose frequently and having a review with their doctor at least every 3 months is a positive thing. Bottom line, a diabetic who cares enough to take care of themselves, has a great chance of getting great life insurance quotes.

The problem with Group life insurance benefits!!

Having group life insurance through your job is certainly one of the top excuses for not buying a personal life insurance policy. After all, if you already have it, why buy more. And group insurance is generally sooo cheap.

Well, allow me to throw a rock in that placid pool of thought and cause a few waves. Changing jobs is statistically happening more frequently. It’s not like our parent’s day when you got a job and worked it from then until you retired or died. I think I read somewhere that the average working person who has a job that would be eligible for group benefits, changes employment 7 times over their working lifespan.

Two things can happen to your group life insurance when you change jobs. Most group life insurance policies, which are term insurance, are convertible to either whole life or universal life policies if you leave employment. Very few of these conversion options would fall into the category of what would be called an attractive offer. Generally they are overpriced and under guaranteed. So your choice becomes either accepting a bad deal, quickly finding another job with a comparable group life plan, or buying a personal policy.

The other thing that can happen with group coverage if you leave employment is that it simply ceases. Most are kind enough to give you 30 days, a grace period of sorts, but then it simply goes away.

Especially in today’s market when an independent life insurance agent can find you term life insurance at extremely competitive prices, a prudent and reasonable thing to do is to carry a personal policy all of the time and consider group benefits to be the frosting on the cake, not the cake itself. Then, if you change employment you have ongoing coverage. Your family is never put in a position of being left with nothing if you pass away unexpectedly.

Please don’t misunderstand. I advocate gobbling up all the the cheap group benefits that are offered. Just remember they aren’t guaranteed. Your employer could decide to cut benefits. You could quit or be fired and be forced into a bad conversion option or be left with no option at all.

The good news about prostate cancer and life insurance!!

Prostate cancer is, if not the most common, certainly one of the most common kinds of cancer in men. I think I’ve heard it said that the majority of men who live a long life will have it at some point.

The good news from a life insurance standpoint is that prostate cancer in most cases is very insurable after a minimal post treatment waiting period. I say most cases and not all, because obviously some incidents of prostate cancer are more severe than others. Most prostate cancer falls into the less severe category. If you meet the criteria outlined below and use an independent life insurance agent who understands the challenge, your quotes for term insurance, universal life or whole life insurance should be a pleasant surprise.

There are three indicators that life nsurance underwriters look at when determining the insurability of a prostate cancer survivor. The first is the PSA (prostate specific antigen) at the time of diagnosis. Prostate cancer is often detected because the PSA is above normal, above 4.0, or if the PSA is gradually elevating on subsequent exams. For the purpose of life insurance quotes, a PSA of 10 or less at the time of diagnosis is best. The lower the better.

Once a troublesome PSA is observed, it is usually followed with a biopsy. This will determine if there is cancer or if the elevated PSA has been caused by something else, like prostatitis (an infection of the prostate). If cancer is found it is assigned a grade based on the biopsy. This is called a Gleason score. A Gleason score of 4 or less (on a scale to 10) would be considered a very non aggressive cancer. A Gleason of 5 or 6 would be only moderately aggressive. At a Gleason of 7, insurance becomes trickier, although still insurable.  A Gleason of 8-10 is a tough sell for most underwriters. Don’t throw in the towel until your independent life insurance agent has thoroughly shopped it though!

Treatment options include everything from leaving it alone if it is a very low grade cancer to a radical prostatectomy (removal of the prostate) if the risk is higher. At this point it is also assigned a stage of 1, 2, 3 or 4, depending on how much the cancer has spread. An encapsalated cancer for instance would likely be a stage 1. Cancer that has metastatized to the bone or other organs would probably be a 4.

To summarize, an independent insurance agent can generally get quotes that are better than standard rates if their prostate cancer surviving client had a PSA of less than 10, a Gleason score of 6 or less and a stage of 1 or a low 2. The PSA after treatment has to be 0 if they had a prostatectomy or .5 or less if they used some other form of treatment. Those criteria would qualify most prostate cancer survivors for better than standard rates.

So, the good news is that prostate cancer generally doesn’t mean the end to your ability to purchase affordable life insurance. If you need life insurance and have survived prostate cancer, contact an independent life insurance agent today and provide them with all of the information cited above. Get them a copy of your original pathology report and if you had surgery, a post surgical pathology report. Give them all of the information and you will be pleased with the results.