Many seniors use pacemakers to help them live a good life. If your worry is on how a pacemaker will affect your life insurance, there so much to understand here. Life insurance for seniors with pacemaker can be expensive or not available if not searched well.
Life insurance policies can be a big deal to many people especially the seniors. In many cases people find themselves confused and wondering how exactly to go about taking different life insurance policies depending on their condition.
Many conditions that are considered are age, health, and financial stability. In this case, it is important to understand all through dos and don’ts as well as advantages available and those not available depending on various conditions.
Can You Get Life Insurance with a Pacemaker?
Yes, you can.
This is mostly one of the important and bothering questions for a person with a pacemaker or a defibrillator.
When you are a senior, with a pacemaker and in need of life insurance it is important to understand everything that goes on with a life insurance company to give you the offer.
Just for having a pacemaker it does not mean that you will lose the opportunity of life insurance. This is the first thing to understand that insurers consider a number of things when offering insurance policies. As a matter of fact, a pacemaker might end up giving you an advantage or contributing to helping you get life insurance.
However, the company will obviously have to consider a number of things. You might end up getting a premium that is different from what other people with good health are getting.
In addition to this, there are a number of things you need to understand that is highly related to a life insurance company before offering you a policy.
- The first thing you should be patient: This is because insurers take more caution when offering life insurance to seniors with a pacemaker as compared to a healthy person. The company will end up requiring a lot of documentation when you are applying for insurance. You should be ready and patient enough to meet all these requirements for the documentation.
- Your condition is very important: Since the condition resulting in the use of the pacemaker is one that is interfering with your health and life, it is a major concern to the insurance companies. The company will be interested in knowing as much as possible about your condition.
- There are certain different conditions: The company takes into consideration that the pacemaker can help you overcome the conditions of your health and actually giving you longer living. However, there are rare cases in which the pacemaker works by slowing the progression of a chronic heart. In this case, it will highly impact the application process for life insurance.
- The application can be denied: However, it is important to understand that these are very rare cases. This is because many life insurance companies will opt to give you a higher premium rate.
Possible Questions that You May Need to Answer
Before a policy can be granted to you there are many questions that you will have to answer. A life insurance company will be asking these questions with the purpose of understanding all your health issues which in turn will enable them to better help you in coming up with a policy. These questions include the following:
How regularly do you see a cardiologist?
Every insurance company at this moment is interested in understanding exactly how you are living. The major goal is to know as much as possible about your health and what you are doing about it. They will want to know if you are being proactive towards your condition. You may also be asked to present a previous examination or test results such as echocardiograms or x-rays.
Are you under any medications?
For life insurance companies, this is a common question for all the applicants. However, it is important to understand that they will take great interest in exactly what are the medications you are taking and be able to understand what impact they have towards your cardiac condition.
For how long have you been using the pacemaker?
This is a very important factor for the insurance company. The company needs to understand whether you are already living in a stable state or not. This can only be achieved by understanding how long you have been using the pacemaker. In case you have used the pacemaker recently, or you have not used it for less than 12 months then they may deny you insurance.
If you have experienced any chest pains in recent time?
This is definitely not a good sign. When you happen to have experienced such pains it means that something is not going right. This is how the company will be viewing it. However, in cases where you had chest pains and now you are okay, then it is a positive factor.
Exercise, diet, and lifestyle
This is another factor that will be asked about. The company is interested in knowing that irrespective of using a pacemaker you are putting efforts to live a better life. They will want to know how you have been eating and exercising. Smoking will also pose a very negative impact and you have to take a nicotine test.
What Happens If You Were Previously Rejected?
For sure this is a big deal and great concern for a senior who is using a pacemaker. Once you have been rejected and wondering if you will fall for the same in the future. Do not worry about that. If you had applied and rejected previously then there may be some good news.
If you have been using a pacemaker all that time and has not had any health issues since the last time you applied, then it means that you have higher chances now. Once the company finds out that you have been using your pacemaker for some time now and your health has been stable then they are willing to approve you.
Be Honest & Apply
The first thing is that you have to be as honest as possible when making your application. This means that you have to be very honest about your condition and everything else related to that. You should consider having a very skilled personal/ independent agent to help you with the process.
The very first step towards applying for life insurance when you are a senior with a pacemaker is by providing a clear account of your health history. You have to provide proof of the records you have. However, there are companies that do it in the traditional way. In this case, they will require you to take a medical exam to understand your actual health condition. It is a method used to access your overall life expectancy as well as health.
The next thing to expect is a lot of questions. Insurance companies are very keen on asking you many questions and you should be okay with that. Such questions have been discussed above.
Getting a Friendly Insurer for Senior with a Pacemaker
After understanding everything about insurance companies and how they work in terms of a pacemaker user then it is important to understand how easily you can know which insurance company is best for you. It might seem really a difficult thing but all you need to do is to be keen with your moves.
Get a life insurance agent
This is not a must thing but I would say it is the most preferred one. An agent can make all the process easy. At the same time, there is a lot of lengthy procedures and documentation related to life insurance for people using a pacemaker. This means that a life insurance agent will come in handy to help you out it going through all these processes.
Premiums offered by the company
Life insurance companies are different from one to the other. As a result, they all have varying policies and premiums for their customers. You need to look around and into different companies’ policies to understand as much as possible about their services.
Know your budget
By understanding how much you are willing or able to spend on your life insurance policy it will make everything else really simple. This will guide you into what company to go for.
At the same time, it is a factor that will help you choose wisely when it comes to premium options that are provided by the company. This is a factor that will indirectly affect what benefits you will end up expecting depending on the premium you take.