Can people who have survived serious illnesses get life insurance?
[social_share]Many people who have survived serious illnesses find it hard to get further life insurance. There are still some ways to get this insurance.
If a person has gone through a serious illness such as cancer, heart disease or diabetes then they can find life insurance very hard to obtain whether or not that disease was in itself life threatening. This is not because the life insurance companies are being cruel, but because a person who has recently survived a major illness is far more likely to die.
This is highly unfortunate, because people who have gone through these diseases realise that they do need life insurance in order to help their family if they should die. It seems that when people are healthy then they put off the decision to buy life insurance and if they realise that they need life insurance then they find it very hard to buy it.
Permanent life insurance can act as a way around this, but only for people who have not been diagnosed with an illness. If the permanent life insurance was taken out before the illness was diagnosed then it cannot be cancelled by the insurance company. In this case it is almost always advisable to keep up with the payments of premiums as this can be a very good deal compared to the life insurance that would otherwise be available.
Unfortunately permanent life insurance will be far harder to get once the illness has been diagnosed. This is also the case if there has been a recovery, including a full remission from any disease.
There are specialist insurers who deal with this type of life insurance. It is highly unlikely that any mainstream large life insurers will deal with these classes of life insurance, at least not with their main life brands – which are aimed at an easy to assess mainstream market.
Specialist life insurers are far more likely to insist that there should be a medical examination as for a person with a poor health history their current medical state is far more important than it would be for a person who has not had serious issues – where demographic information plays a far larger part.
People who have survived a serious disease and are looking for insurance should go to a broker. Brokers have a good knowledge of the insurance market, and will often have access to special deals. This tends to mean that they are going to be worth the fee that they charge.
