Is it possible to get a life insurance policy after you learn you have a serious condition?
[social_share]Purchasing a life insurance policy can be difficult for an applicant who has a serious disease. However, this doesn’t mean no life insurance is available.
Insurance companies charge higher premiums to write policies for people who have a serious disease or condition, such as cancer or diabetes. This is not because of callousness, but because the chances of a person dying before a significant number of premiums have been paid, particularly if he or she is relatively young, have increased significantly.
Life insurance is essentially an exercise in averaging. In a pool of people who have purchased a similar life insurance policy, if enough is known about their health and other lifestyle factors, then the payout that will be made across the group can be forecast with a high level of accuracy. However, this means the insurance companies are concerned with factors that affect a person’s expected lifespan.
There are a number of factors an insurance company considers when writing life insurance policies, including the applicant’s age, occupation, gender, and level of education, all of which affect the expectations of payouts to be made and premiums collected over time. However, there are other factors that also must be considered, and one of these is whether the person has suffered from a serious condition, even if he or she has recovered. Life insurance actuaries have collected statistics showing how long a person is likely to live, and a recent or ongoing health condition is likely to shorten that time and so hasten the life insurance policy’s payout.
For a life insurance applicant who has recovered from his or her illness a long time ago, there may not be a drastic rise in premiums, although it is likely they’ll still be higher than those for a person who has not had such health issues.
There are specialist insurers who offer life insurance policies for people with health conditions, although they tend to insist on medical examinations and ask more detailed questions about the applicant’s health and lifestyle. Many of these specialised insurers can be reached through insurance brokers.
In short, almost any applicant, despite their health history, can purchase life insurance. However, they are likely to pay more to get it.
