How Drinking Can Affect Your Life Insurance Rate
November 17, 2009 |
Featured
Alcohol abuse can significantly lower life expectancy. Therefore it does make sense that heavy drinkers have to pay higher premium costs for life insurance than moderate drinkers. Heavy drinking potentially causes many health issues including, liver disease, dementia, heart problems, strokes and various type of gastrointestinal problems. Because heavy drinking poses a greater risk of incurring serious health problems, it isn’t at all surprising that a life insurance company will ask on your policy application questions regarding your alcohol intake. Consuming over two drinks a day will disqualify you for preferred rates. If you have over four drinks a day, you will be disqualified from getting standard rates. Beyond that you would have to buy a rated policy, which means you would pay an extra premium due to the added risk.
In addition to the information that you provide on your insurance application, life insurance companies have other ways of identifying alcohol abuse. Life insurance companies can find out about any excessive alcohol use if there are any notations on your medical records. Insurance companies also run liver function tests on blood samples that are obtained during a medical exam to get life insurance.
A liver function test, also called a GGT, measures how irritated the liver is. Individuals who are heavy drinkers will have higher liver function than those who drink only moderately. An elevate level of liver enzymes will not automatically mean higher insurance rates. Taking Ibuprofen or other types of medical problems could also cause elevated liver function. In order to determine if elevated liver function is related to alcohol use, the insurance company runs an alcohol marker test. If the results from the alcohol marker show irritation related to the use of alcohol, the insurance company will decline your application for life insurance. If there are other medical issues causing the irritation, you might still qualify for the standard rates.
Another alcohol issue that will increase the rates on life insurance is any recent drunk driving convictions. The rates are better the longer it has been since a conviction. You can usually qualify for the standard when a DUI conviction is at least two or three years old. After five years, it is possible you might qualify for the preferred rates as long as you have relatively good health. If you have had multiple violations for drunk driving it will probably be almost impossible to get life insurance.
If you had an alcohol problem in the past but have stopped drinking and are in recovery now, you may still end up paying higher premium prices for life insurance. Even after you have successfully completed your rehabilitation program and have been sober for months, you will probably not be able to obtain life insurance until two years after your recovery. You may qualify for the standard rates after five years, however qualifying for preferred rates could take as many as ten to twenty years of being sober.
Tags:
