Heart Disease Life Insurance
Nearly 1.2 million heart attacks occur from heart disease each year, and unfortunately not all those with heart disease have the life insurance they need. More than 40% that suffer from a heart attack will die. Even more shocking, 335,000 people with heart attacks will die before ever reaching the hospital or in an emergency room. The American Heart Association claims that over 7 million Americans have suffered a heart attack in their lifetime. Because heart disease is so common and often silent until it strikes, many people do not have the life insurance in place they need. It is important to recognize the factors that have an adverse effect on underwriting in the life insurance industry. Age, family history of heart disease or CAD, race, smoking, cholesterol, uncontrolled hypertension, physical inactivity, obesity (more than 20% over one's ideal body weight), uncontrolled diabetes, high C-reactive protein and uncontrolled stress and anger.
Making changes in your lifestyle is a proven method for reducing your risk of developing heart disease. While there are no guarantees that a heart healthy lifestyle will keep heart disease away, these changes will certainly improve your health in other ways, such as improving your physical and emotional well being. Also, because some risk factors are related to others, making changes in one area can benefit other areas. With medical technology today heart disease and other heart related matters can be corrected whereby in many cases your life expectancy is not impeded upon. Today's technology with respect to heart scans, stress tests, echocardiograms, catherizations etc. we can establish a good base line to avoid death threatening heart attacks. For whatever reason, many people with heart disease do not engage in these methods to establish a base line of understanding where their heart stands. In our opinion, we believe it is essential in the foundation of understanding our heart better in that every human should have a cardiac work up starting at the age of perhaps 40. If older it should be on an annual basis. We are granted one life and our heart is our engine. The life insurance industry is more liberal these days due to medical advancements in understanding how different heart defects effect mortality risk. Some carriers will not rate you extra premium if you had a heart attack, by-pass surgery, stinting etc. Most carriers will rate depending on the diagnosis and risk factor involved. The key is if the problem is corrected there must be good cardiac follow up to void any future recurrence. Good follow up puts everyone's mind at ease and bodes for a positive outcome when applying for life insurance with heart disease. Many insured's are paying higher premiums for CAD history when they should not be.
|
