How to Apply for Life Insurance with a Medical Condition

How to Apply for Life Insurance With a Medical Condition & Secure the Best Rates in [2024]

Applying for life insurance with a medical condition can sometimes be a challenge if the health issue is cancer or heart disease. There are also many other health conditions that are easy and simple to work with. Life insurance rates can be affected by your occupation, favorite sport or even your hobby also.

Unfortunately, you would never be aware of many of these until you apply for a life insurance policy. Therefore, it is essential to know what to do before you apply.

Having a pre-existing health condition can increase your premiums, but not always. This will depend on the individual applicant and their specific situation, such as their overall health, height and weight and their lifestyle.

This blog post will reveal ways to successfully apply and get approved for coverage and also secure the lowest premiums possible. 

 

What Is a High Risk Medical Condition?

In short, a risky medical condition will be a health issue such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and many others that could reduce your expected lifespan.

Sometimes medical conditions can begin as simple and treatable but can quickly escalate to life-threatening situations. Unfortunately, medical underwriters cannot predict an individual’s future, but they must consider this possibility seriously.

Even your lifestyle, which seems perfectly normal, may contain some high-risk ingredients. These could be hazardous occupations that could one day take your life.

Last but not least, your lifestyle, such as hobbies and sports can put up a red flag and cause complications for your application. You may have a sports activity that you enjoy which could be classified as hazardous because it poses a possible threat to your life such as skydiving, rafting or auto racing.

How to Apply for Life Insurance With a Medical Condition: YouTube Video

 

Can I Buy Life Insurance With a High Risk Medical Condition?

Usually, you can apply and get approved for life insurance if you have a medical condition that is not severe. For example, if you have been diagnosed with cancer or just had open-heart surgery, you will normally be declined.

In these cases, you will have to wait until your condition has improved to re-apply. There are many medical conditions that you could have that will have little to no effect on your life insurance application.

One sure-fire way to tell if you will be accepted and get a projection of your premiums is with our medical pre-screen. This five-minute question-and-answer form will give us the information we need to make a judgment call on your projected application. 

 

How Can I be Sure I’m Getting the Lowest Rates?

The responsibility lies with your insurance advisors such as ourselves who are independent agents. We use over 40 top-rated companies and shop the market hard to make sure we have our applicants apply with the correct insurance carriers.

Once the application process is complete, we will carefully review the final rates. If we believe there is a possibility of getting a lower premium for our client, we apply to several other companies.

Once all projected rates come in, we choose the carrier that offers the lowest rates and then present them to our clients for their consideration. When the smoke clears, our client will be guaranteed to receive the lowest premium possible.

The complete process is straightforward and requires little to no work for the applicant.

 

How Do Carriers Adjust Your Rates for High Risk Medical Conditions?

Health Classifications:

Your rates may be affected in several ways, such as an adjustment to the health classification that you will be placed in after you apply. The categories you receive can vary from one carrier to another, depending on their underwriting guidelines.

Here is a basic breakdown of the classifications:

1. Preferred Plus
2. Preferred
3. Standard
4. Standard Plus

If you use tobacco products, the rate classes would be:
Preferred Tobacco or Standard Tobacco

These rate classes can also be subject to table ratings, increasing your premiums by a percentage added to your base rates. They can use them with the letters A-J or the numbers 1-10. Some companies use the number system, and other companies use the alphabet version.

Example: “Standard” (rate table C) or “Standard” (rate table 3). The higher the number or as the letters proceed, the higher the rates.

Life Insurance Rate Table Comparison

Here is an example to help you better understand:

Let’s just say you applied for a life insurance policy using a projected “Standard” rate class that would cost $1,000.00 per year.

Underwriting is now complete and your policy has been approved with the standard rate class, but due to complications with your medical condition, you were approved with a rate class of standard with rate table D.

You would have a rate increase of $100%, which would now give you a final premium of $2,000.00 per year. Please refer to rate table “D” in the chart above.

 

Is a Medical Pre-Screen Advisable Before I Apply?

A quick five-minute medical pre-screening can make all the difference in achieving the best rates. This information will help us choose the right company for you to apply to. It will also help project the outcome of your application before you even apply.

All pre-screening is, in essence, a simple five-minute verbal conversation that asks a few basic questions concerning any possible health conditions and what prescription drugs are being subscribed by your doctor.

It will also check to see if the potential applicant has a dangerous occupation or is involved with any hazardous sports that could affect his or her application.

 

Can I Apply Over the Phone to Save Time?

The telephone application is the most convenient way of applying for life insurance. In the past, people used to have to complete a 20-page paper application which was a project that nobody appreciated.

Then the online application came along, which was much better. Still, many people would get confused with the online application, and you would have to own a computer with a good internet connection.

The telephone applications we use will take about 15-20 minutes to complete, and all you have to do is listen to the questions and then answer them.

So it does not get any simpler than that. Also, the girls in the application department are very efficient and friendly and do 90% of the work.

Our Final Thoughts

If you believe you have any high risk health conditions, contact us to help you. This is our business, and we have successfully done this for over 30 years.

Buying life insurance is very simple and quick with today’s modern application systems, especially when using the right agent to help you every inch of the way.

Please read some of our information-packed blog posts, and don’t forget to use our instant quoting system to see your options.

All the best,
Jack Venturi

 

Should you have any questions or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to call us at 815-390-7545 for a prompt response.