The Easy Way To Get Affordable Life Insurance If You’ve Had Health Issues.

It’s what we’re all looking for, right? The path of least resistance. I know whenever I can I would prefer to do as little as possible and, really, honestly, I would kind of like instant gratification. Hey it leaves more time for the fun stuff.

Getting affordable  life insurance when you’ve had health issues could be compared to making a living gold mining. The easiest way would be to sit by a stream and wait until the flow moves a rock and uncovers a piece of gold which you could then just reach down and pick up. Not very likely that you would make a living but it doesn’t get much easier and there actually is a chance you might find some gold. The alternative would be to get a shovel and a pan and go looking for gold. A little bit of work will ultimately yield a lot more than doing no work at all. Novel concept but it’s stood the test of time.

So, let’s say you’ve got type 1 diabetes and you’re in your 30′s. You’ve been dealing with diabetes since you were a child and you’ve done a good job. You’ve kept it well controlled. Because it’s well controlled it hasn’t affected your health in other ways such as eyesight or kidney problems. You monitor your glucose regularly and you are compliant with the regimen your doctor has recommended. You don’t try to get by without checking by waiting until you don’t feel quite right. Your A1c stays at 7 or under.

If someone asked you the easy way to get affordable life insurance, what would your answer be? For the sake of this question let’s assume you have never applied previously and don’t know that almost all companies will automatically decline you if you have type 1 diabetes.

Well, the sitting by the stream method is all over TV and the internet. There is the laying by the stream with your eyes closed method called “no exam” life insurance. All you have to do is answer a few questions, no exam and you’re done. Unfortunately in this context the word done doesn’t mean that you have accomplished your goal of finding affordable life insurance. It means that one of the questions is about diabetes and once you answer that yes, you are done as in declined.

Then there is the more hands on sitting by the stream waiting for a piece of gold to show up. This would be one of the big on line agencies where they handle “hundreds of thousands” of applications a year and the only way they could possibly do that would be to have a system that is just slick and bombproof and guaranteed not to leave any stains. They ask several health questions over the phone and then give you an affordable quote and send out an application.  It does require a physical, but they make that easy too. Someone can come right to your house, ask a lot of questions, get some bodily fluids from you and they’re outa there. You’re free to go on vacation while they obtain medical records and the underwriter reviews your file. You come home rested, refreshed and newly declined. Remember the part where “almost all companies will automatically decline you if you have type 1 diabetes”? Well, the problem with the mega agencies is that the only way they can make a profit is kind of like an assembly line where as long as there is a steady flow of applications going out to their highest paying companies, they can deal with delivering a decline once in a while or telling you that it is going to cost three times what they quoted. They can’t place the decline and they know they likely won’t place one with a substantial rate change, but it’s all good to them because they have hundreds of thousands of other applications.

So let’s pick up that shovel and pan and get serious. It isn’t easy to get approved affordable life insurance with serious health issues and there is no easy way out of that. The equivalent of working a little harder starts with you sorting out the bull in the advertising. Read before you call and if you don’t get the sense that the person answering the phone is going to have experienced success in solving your problem for you, don’t call. Keep digging until you find someone that rings the bell or flips the light on, like, “maybe this person really does know how to get it done”. When you call them be prepared to work a little on your own behalf. This person is going to want to know lab results and in some cases have you fax or scan the results to them. Depending on the impairment a good agent may need you to send a stress test or a sleep study. You’ve got homework, but remember, this is about life insurance success, impaired risk life insurance success. This is about finding gold and not wasting your time.

Bottom line. Please don’t get the impression that an agent like me is going to have you shoveling half your life to get results, but know that all the work you do to help an agent is going to mean less money you pay for the life insurance protection you need. If you have any questions or have run into some of those dead ends, please call or email me directly. My name is Ed Hinerman. Let’s talk.