How to secure life insurance after bypass surgery?
In order to secure life insurance after bypass surgery, you must first work with an independent “special risk” agent that represents multiple carriers. Your agent should have years of experience working with insurance carriers that specialize in underwriting cardiovascular risks.
Fortunately, you have landed on the right page. We have years of experience and knowledge in helping people secure life insurance after bypass surgery.
We know the insurance companies that are best to apply to. We also know what it actually takes to find out if affordable coverage is available for your particular situation.
You see, most agents simply don’t know or perhaps have never learned how to present a case to an underwriting company that deals with pre-existing medical conditions. Many times, an agent will actually hurt their insured’s chances of securing a viable offer for coverage.
We will go into detail later in this blog on the right way to present your case to the insurance carrier.
What is CABG and how does this condition affect your life insurance rates?
In the United States, coronary artery bypass is a common procedure to treat coronary artery disease. There are typically two main types of bypasses. The first type involves the saphenous vein being removed from the leg, reversed in direction, and then attached into the aorta and coronary artery beyond the blockage.
The second type involves freeing one end of the internal mammary artery from the chest wall and attaching it to the coronary artery beyond the blockage. Often when more that one vessel is bypassed, both types of bypasses are used. Some of the complications from CABG surgery that can also be of concern when underwriting life insurance coverage include:
- atrial fibrillation
- permanent pacemaker
- pulmonary embolism
- ventricular arrhythmia’s
- hepatitis B or C
- stroke
- congestive heart failure
- depression
All or any of these complications can make the risk calculations more difficult when trying to secure life insurance after bypass surgery.
When a life insurance underwriter is evaluating the risk of coronary artery disease bypass surgery, the risk is primarily determined by the age of the applicant and the severity of the underlying coronary artery disease.
Some of the negative factors when underwriting CABG applicants can include complications from the surgery, recurrent angina, abnormal follow-up treadmill test, multiple cardiac risk factors present and left ventricular dysfunction.
Questions required to determine life insurance rating for CABG
Some of the questions that your agent will need to get answered in order to determine what company can offer you the best rates can include:
- Date of Birth?
- Male or Female?
- Date of bypass surgery?
- How many vessels were bypassed?
- Have you had history of heart attack, coronary angioplasty, heart failure or valve surgery? If so, need dates
- Current medications?
- Has a follow-up stress test been completed since the bypass surgery? If so, when and what was the result?
- Have you had any chest discomfort since the bypass surgery?
- Do you have any of the following? High cholesterol, high blood pressure, irregular heart beat, diabetes, peripheral vascular disease
- Have you ever used tobacco? If so, last used?
- Any other major health conditions?
- Height/weight?
The right and wrong way to secure life insurance after bypass surgery
The wrong way….
As mentioned earlier a non-experienced agent can actually hurt your chances of finding the most affordable rates in the industry. Typically, an agent that has not worked in the “special risk” marketplace will use the shotgun approach to try and secure coverage for their client.
Not knowing the right questions to ask and not knowing how to present the case to the different insurance carriers, the unknowing agent will simply have their prospect fill out multiple insurance applications to different companies and hope that one sticks.
The customer doesn’t know any different and basically follows the advise of their agent. Unbeknownst to the customer this actually can backfire and hurt any chance of finding a competitive offer for life insurance.
Here is an example on why this is not the right way to go about trying to secure life insurance after bypass surgery.
Life insurance companies are not in the business of paying for expensive medical tests, lab studies, EKG’s, medical records from personal physicians unless they have a reasonably good chance of securing the business.
When they receive an application, one of the first things carriers do is submit a request to the medical information bureau. The MIB is a clearinghouse of sorts that insurance companies use to protect themselves.
Once they run the MIB report and see that multiple applications have been sent to several other insurance companies they know that the chances of them securing the business is slim. They may simple tell the client that they did not want their application and refuse to underwrite. They know that this applicant is just shotgunning applications to as many companies as possible.
This is a mistake that a lot of agents do with their prospects when they do not understand the “specialty” of this niche area of underwriting.
This untrained agent may have just kept his customer from getting a really good offer or perhaps the only offer from the one insurance company that would done the best job.
The right way….
How should the agent have handled this situation? When working with pre-exisitng medical conditions such as CABG, it is very hard to know what company will offer the best rates.
Every life insurance company evaluates health and lifestyle differently. But, an experienced agent will know the small group of companies that typically underwrite and provide the lowest rates for individuals looking to secure life insurance after bypass surgery.
Using the answers to the questions above, the special risk agent will then informally speak to the underwriters at this small group of companies. This investigation of sorts allows the agent to get an idea of what kind of offer each carrier would provide.
The agent negotiates with each carrier by phone and secures a tentative quote from each insurance company based on the health questions, etc. that were answered. This keeps everything out of the MIB file and does not hurt the client from securing an offer from whichever insurance company provides the best rate.
This also is a much faster way to find out if the rates are affordable. This keeps the customer from having to fill out streams of different applications and waste time completing medical exams and blood test.
Once the agent has secured the offers from each insurance company they will then provide tentative rates to the customer. The customer can then decide if the tentative rates are affordable, and if so can make formal application to the company for protection. The tentative rates are still subject to complete medical review an approval by the underwriting company.
Conclusion…
Life insurance protection for individuals after bypass surgery can be attainable. Quite often, if the coronary history is mild very reasonable rates are available. But, it is extremely important to only work with an agent that has the experience and knowledge of this marketplace. We have that experience and knowledge and we represent all the carriers working in this niche.
If you would like to discuss your situation, please contact us at 1-888-393-9003 or e-mail Mike@specialriskterm.com
Thank you reading this blog.
