Life Insurance

Does anyone have experiencing with purchasing life insurance post treatment?

I have a term policy which has had a constant rate till now, but the rate will start rising rapidly in the next couple of years.

Would look at replacing the current policy, but even with good results two years post treatment I wonder how insurable I am. Anyone been through this?

As a 3 time cancer survivor I have experience in this area. As a rule, you need to be 5 years cancer free before anyone will underwrite you at rates you would even consider paying.

I went in remission for lymphoma and then had malignant melanoma 4 years and 11 months later. Had to wait another 5 years after that before I could buy insurance on the open market.

Now I have prostate cancer like most on this forum, but being retired have no need for life insurance (since the primary purpose of life insurance is to replace income).

The insurance companies are only going to protect their interests. If you can show then some years of being cancer-free, then they MAY consider insuring you, but the rates may be higher than you feel to be worth it.

I'm in the "double-whammy" group. I have some cardiac issues (surgically treated) and PCa (now treated) but even prior to the cancer diagnosis, I could not find anyone willing to write a new policy of any significance. (e.g. I could find some policies willing to write me up to $10,000-20,000, but not over $100K.) So far, I have kept my term life policy, but if the premium goes up too much, I'll let it lapse.

BTW, the other insurance you won't likely be able to get is long-term care insurance. I spoke with one broker, from a very reputable company, and she said that she wouldn't even take an application. She knew she couldn't get me covered. I guess I'll just have to prove all these people wrong and go on to live a long time.

As a 4x cancer survivor, totally screwed on life insurance, all I have is 2 different 15k policies (only because they didn't ask any health questions. I am almost 65, so my age alone would make it rocket high, regardless of my health. Last I was told, I would have to be cancer free for 10 years.

Never going to happen, since my PC dx in August of 2008, I was only un-detectable for 3 months after my original surgery. Never been free since early in 2009, with a steady rising PSA the past nearly 7 years.

Life insurance isn't everything however. I would be leaving my wife totally debt free, including home, all vehicles, and loads of liquid assets I don't feel too bad. Thanks to the VA, even our burial plots are being provided when the time comes.

I have a license to sell insurance in a few Southern states. I'm a financial planner and insurance is a small part of my work, so I'm no expert on this.

I'll say 5 years with good PSA and you can get insurance. You might get rated that causes a higher premium, but you can get it. Try to get something because the end of term "guaranteed coverage" is in meant to cover if you're terminally I'll.

Long term care insurance is rated on a different set of variables than life insurance. To be blunt, the LTC insurer wants to be sure you won't get Alzheimer's, knee replacements, etc. something that will cause you to drag on a while.

Paxton- we think alike. I know you're not supposed to consider the past ("sunk costs") but I could not help look at that. Why drop the policies and lose all past premium payments( I know, I got 20 years of coverage) when I could just extend and get a heckuva return upon death? When you just consider payments from date of renewal it's a no brainer to me. They told me I did not qualify for LTC insurance. IF I do have to spend time in LTC at the end, these policies will serve to pay back my estate for those costs.

Works out - talk to your agent about other options with your existing policy before letting it lapse.

Faustman - I did not ever consider letting my term coverage lapse. We, too, looked at premium from date of renewal to "the end" and kept the policies. As you noted, the policy proceeds will repay my estate for a lot of things at the end.

Bosco - In my case, the term policies do not have conversion privileges, so I just kept them as term.

Something that might be relevant to this discussion.

Clearly a substantial factor in all this is just how long we are each going to live. If we could somehow know that (or could make a good, educated guess as to how long that was going to be) it would then be a much easier matter to calculate the best life insurance option for ourselves. We would know the length of time we had to plan for.

Of course we can't do that, but maybe we can make a good try at it.

A couple of years ago we had a good thread here (I started it) on the value (or lack of value) of all those life expectancy calculators that are available online:

www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=35&m=3551232

The first post in that thread listed three such calculators (one from a large insurance company, one from a prominent business school, and the third being the Social Security calculator).

I had used all three to calculate my own theoretical life expectancy, and some others participating in the thread did so as well. Then we had some fun kicking around just how useful or not so useful those lifetime estimate numbers were.

Clearly, the conclusion reached was that those calculators were good for predicting averages, but not so good at predicting the individual outcome in an individual's situation.

But I'm just throwing this out as something that hasn’t been mentioned, namely the use of these calculators, which I suppose might seem to be somewhat useful to some of us, but would hardly be something on which to base major decisions.

It might be more useful if there was a calculator that could be more "closely tailored" to the individual's situation, including, for example, more personalized factors, such as parents' or siblings' longevity, number of hospital stays during life, lifetime medications history, etc., things like those. (Actually I did look for such a specialized calculator on the web, without success so far, before making this post. If I do come across one later, and it seems useful to discuss, I'll make a post about it).

In the meantime, have some fun with the calculators in the link above if you would like to. They may not be right on the money with accurately predicting your own actual lifespan, but I suppose they could be a factor in doing so, and I suppose they really will tell you just how long an insurance company, the SSA, and a business school think you'll be around.