Top 5 Life Insurance Rejects

Posted in Life Insurance

September 7th, 2010

Life insurance can be a valuable tool for ensuring your loved ones will be financially secure after you pass on. However, not everyone is eligible for a policy. Certain risk factors make obtaining life insurance much more expensive, and sometimes even impossible.

Given the most common risk factors that make insurance policy underwriters cringe, there are a few people that may have an incredibly difficult time obtaining a policy and likely experience life insurance denial.

Life Insurance Risk Factors

According to Insure.com, certain medical conditions are especially “expensive” life insurance risks in determining rates. This is because they have the greatest impact on your life expectancy. The top five most expensive medical conditions are:

1. Heart Disease: This is the condition that will cost you the most. If you’ve ever had a heart attack, the damage caused to your heart is, in most cases, irreversible. The more damage there is, the shorter your life will be.
2. Diabetes: Type 1 diabetes, the kind you’re born with, makes getting insured at all a challenge. Adult onset diabetes, or Type 2, is less costly only if you take steps to manage it well, such as exercising and eating a healthy diet.
3. Cancer: Like diabetes, the kind of cancer you have affects your premium. Internal cancer is considered to be much more serious than external, like skin cancer.
4. Obesity: Carrying extra weight is associated with so many other health complications like heart disease and hypertension that being obese tends to prevent you from obtaining the best life insurance rates.
5. Pulmonary Disease: Asthma isn’t considered to be an issue, but conditions like chronic bronchitis and emphysema, which impact life expectancy, will definitely impact your life insurance options

Most Likely to be Denied Coverage

With these top risk factors in mind, it’s likely if any of the following people ever applied for life insurance policies, they’d be rejected in a heartbeat:

#1 Dick Cheney

Most of us know by now that former Vice President Cheney has suffered a long history of heart problems, including a total of five heart attacks beginning at age 37. However, he soon may not even have a pulse.

ABC News reported in July that Cheney had undergone surgery to implant a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), which will serve as a bridge until he can receive a heart transplant. The LVAD performs about 30 to 60 percent of his heart’s pumping, rendering a heartbeat nearly undetectable.

#2 Sonya Thomas

It’s hard to believe this tiny woman, weighing in at just 105 pounds, is a leading professional eater. She holds the top title in several eating competitions, including consuming 8.4 pounds of baked beans in 2 minutes 47 seconds and 11 pounds of downtown Atlantic cheesecake in 9 minutes.

Thomas may have a gift for staying slim now, but a continued diet that involves shoveling down calorie-dense foods will almost undoubtedly lead to obesity and adult onset diabetes.

#3 Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi

Tanning and partying–Snooki’s favorite (and pretty much only) pastimes are going to catch up with her eventually. Skin cancer may not be considered “serious” by life insurance companies in comparison to other types, but this girl’s obsession with frying her skin is probably an exception to the rule.

Combine this with excessive alcohol consumption, which is linked to a higher incidence of liver, breast and oral cancers to name a few, and this Jersey Shore starlet is destined for chemo treatments unless she changes her ways fast.

#4 Donna Simpson

Goals are usually a healthy thing to have, but this woman is proving that isn’t always the case. Donna Simpson would like to put on some more weight–just enough to reach 1,000 pounds and become the fattest woman in the world.

She already holds the record of Fattest Mom–Simpson gave birth to her daughter in 2007 when she weighed over 531 pounds. So how does she plan to bump up the scale reading to half a ton? She will need to eat an average of 12,000 calories per day while doing her best not to burn too many of them through physical activity.

#5 Ardi Rizal

This is a terrible case of poor parenting and a largely unregulated tobacco industry–Ardi Rizal is a two year old Indonesian boy with a two-pack-a-day habit. His father gave him his first cigarette when he was just 18 months old.

While pulmonary disease, commonly caused by a history of smoking, ranks last on the top five most expensive medical conditions, smoking is actually the number one red flag identified by life insurance companies. Maybe if this kid quits before he starts elementary school he’ll have a chance of leading a healthy life.