How to find affordable life insurance for California residents with Multiple Sclerosis
[Quick tip-want to skip the article and find out if you qualify? Call Mike Raines at 678-207-8160 or email mike@specialriskterm.com. Mike has over 30 years experience in the special risk life insurance arena]
Finding affordable life insurance for California residents with multiple sclerosis is possible. But, first you must know the secrets to finding the companies that underwrite those with multiple sclerosis the best.
Your agent is your best resource
In order to find the right insurance company for your particular situation, you must work with an agent that has years of experience and knowledge in this specialty market. An independent agent, representing multiple insurance companies who specialize in life insurance for California residents with multiple sclerosis will not only save you time, but typically big savings in premium.
You see in the life insurance arena their are literally thousands of agents who very easily can write up a policy on someone with perfect health. But, most agents simply don’t know what to do or how to properly quote someone with some adverse medical history.
In order to make sure you don’t overpay or worse get declined for life insurance due to your medical history you must work with a specialist.
Just as you would not go to your general physician for heart by-pass surgery. You also should make sure your life insurance agent has the knowledge of many years of experience in order to find the best policy at the lowest rate.
Fortunately, you have stumbled across this blog. We are experts at finding the best plans on life insurance for California residents with multiple sclerosis.
Underwriting life insurance for California residents with multiple sclerosis
The bottom line is this. Every life insurance company looks at your health and lifestyle differently. But, only a few life insurance companies actually favor those with a history of multiple sclerosis. It is up to your agent to find and secure the best rates for you.
When a life insurance company underwrites a policy for someone with multiple sclerosis they will typically need your medical history. This can sometimes be obtained thru your personal physicians medical records. They also may wish to have their own para-med nurse come out to do an examination or physical.
This examination typically can be done at the insured’s residency or place of employment. The nurse will check your vital signs, height/weight, draw blood and urine and ask several questions about your medical history. Once the exam is completed the underwriter will review the results and determine what if any other requirements are needed.
As mentioned, often times underwriters will order your personal doctor’s report. This gives the underwriter a snapshot of your past medical history and often times provides the bulk of the information they need to evaluate. Underwriter’s will meticulously comb thru your medical records looking for ways to credit or debit from your overall rating.
Multiple sclerosis is a chronic or recurrent progressive disease of the central nervous system of unknown cause. Underwriters try to evaluate the degree of severity along with the progression of the disease.
The categories typically used by life insurance companies to rate multiple sclerosis are below:
- Mild (Benign MS)- Few (usually 2-4) mild epsiodes with complete or near complete recovery in between
- Moderate– Slowly progressive, with infrequent episodes and some recovery in between.
- Severe– More progressive disease with frequent episodes
Now, in addition to the category mentioned above, underwriters will also looking for symptoms reported by the prospect along with the age at which the multiple sclerosis was diagnosed.
Some of the involvement and the symptoms reported include:
- Motor- Weakness
- Sensory- Numbness
- Visual- Blurring, double vision
- Vestibular- Light-headedness
- Genitourinary- Incontinence
Questions to help evaluate-
Here are some of the questions your special risk agent will need to get answered in order to properly determine how to continue:
- Date of first diagnosis?
- Number of episodes and date of last episode?
- Currently on any medication?
- Current neurological status? I.E. Normal, minimal residual impairment, moderate residual impairment, severe residual impairment
- Had a MRI or brain scan completed?
- Used any tobacco in last 5 years?
- Any other major health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc?
The best way to get an offer for life insurance protection
How you go about trying to secure your life insurance is critical. As mentioned earlier your agent is your best ally. An agent who specializes in finding affordable life insurance protection for those with pre-existing medical conditions is vital. You see they know the secrets on how to present your case in the best light to the different insurance companies.
Let’s look at an example on the right way and the wrong way to present a case.
The wrong way-
Joe insurance agent works for one of the largest insurance companies in the United States. They sell lots of homeowners insurance, auto insurance, liability insurance and yes life insurance.
Joe represents this one carrier and feels they can write most any policy that he needs.
David age 45 has been a customer of Joe’s for several years and naturally looks to Joe for advise on all his insurance needs.
David owns his own company and employs 15 people. David feels he needs to purchase a $1,000,000 key man life insurance policy to protect his business. David contacts Joe to discuss his need for life insurance.
David is worried about his diagnosis a few years ago of Multiple Sclerosis. He feels he may have a hard time securing life insurance protection.
David feels fine. But, he has had a few episodes along with some mild weakness and blurring vision. He explains his situation to Agent Joe.
Agent Joe seems to brush off the multiple sclerosis history (Joe had never insured someone with MS) and gives David a rate for coverage. David is pleased with the rate and sits down and completes an application. Joe schedules David for a short medical exam an awaits the outcome of the underwriting.
A few weeks pass and Agent Joe is notified from the home office that David’s life insurance application has been declined due to medical history. Agent Joe feels awful. He hates that he has to tell David that coverage is not available.
Needless to say David his not a happy camper. He asks Joe what is options are. Agent Joe, having no experience dealing with cases involving multiple sclerosis unfortunately offers no solutions.
David has wasted several weeks of time and still has no life insurance. David then goes online and finds a local agent that is independent an offers several different life companies.
David explains the situation to the independent agent. The independent agent who has been in business for only a year also has no knowledge or experience in handling a situation involving multiple sclerosis. Wanting to at least try to help David, the independent agent suggest applying to multiple carriers and seeing who makes the best offer. (bad idea)
David again fills out multiple insurance applications and schedules his second medical exam. Another few weeks go by and the independent agent finally contacts David to give him the new. No offer for coverage was made.
You see even thought the independent agent representing multiple insurance companies, they were the wrong companies. None of the companies the agent applied to specialize in underwriting life insurance protection for those with MS.
David has now spent several months trying to get insurance and is no further along than when he started. Alas, David goes back online to begin his search for coverage. This time David Googles life insurance for California residents with Multiple Sclerosis. He sees the website http://specialriskterm.com/.
David finally feels he may have found the best chance at securing protection.
The right way-
David talks to his special risk life agent and tells him what has occurred over the last several months. The special risk agent feels pretty confident that coverage can be obtained.
One of the major hurdles that will have to be overcome is the medical information bureau report. This report will show multiple declination’s on Davids file due to the applications that were denied by the other insurance carriers.
David’s special risk agent tells him he will personally write a cover letter to the underwriter explaining what had occurred over the last several months.
SIDE NOTE- You see life insurance carriers don’t like to see that you have applied for coverage for several insurance carriers and been denied. This brings up a red flag in their eyes. They also don’t want to waste time and money underwriting your policy if you are just shopping with multiple insurance carriers. This is a mistake that many agents make that do not know how to properly prepare a case with pre-existing medical conditions.
David’s special risk agent then goes to work. He asked David the right questions about his medical history regarding how long, how many episodes, mild, moderate, severe and if he has any other symptoms or health history.
Once getting as much information as he can, the agent then calls and speaks to multiple insurance companies personally by phone. This keeps everything out of the MIB file. This is what an expert agent in special risk calls an informal application.
This is an informal way of finding out what a particular insurance company might offer if you decide to apply for coverage. This allows the special risk agent to shop and compare rates from different companies without ever having to put his client thru an exam.
Now that all the carries have given their verbal offers the agent can go back to David and show him what is available if he should apply.
David is ecstatic to know that 3 insurance companies are willing to make an offer. David an his special risk agent determine the best offer from the 3 carriers an apply for the best one.
David now completes any other requirements needed and waits for his application to be approved.
After a few weeks David receives a phone call form his agent telling him that a policy has been approved for coverage.
David is glad to now have a $1 million policy to protect his family and business should something happen to him.
Conclusion-
The bottom line is this. There are agents who specialize in life insurance for California residents with multiple sclerosis.
But, it takes an agent with many years of experience along with the right carriers to make it happens. It also takes an agent who knows how to prepare the customer the right way. You don’t want to spend your time completing application after application and exam after exam.
Life insurance for California residents with Multiple Sclerosis is possible if you talk to an expert. Contact us today to find the lowest rates available on life insurance for California residents with multiple sclerosis.
You can reach us at 1-888-393-9003 or mike@specialriskterm.com Thank you for reading this blog.
