Life Insurance With History of Prostate Cancer

If your looking for life insurance with history of prostate cancer, call us today to discuss your specific insurance needs.

Prostate cancer, like a lot of cancers, is recurring. This means it’s not uncommon for prostate cancer to return after treatment.

Many men believe that, because of their history with prostate cancer, they will not be able to qualify for life insurance at an affordable rate. While it’s true that recurrence increases your risk, the worry that you may not be able to qualify for life insurance is often unfounded.

What’s worse is that guaranteed accepted life insurance companies exploit this fear and many men end up paying high fees for a small amount of coverage.

If you have a history of prostate cancer, we can help you find life insurance to suit your needs. With the help of a trusted agent and knowledge on your side, finding a carrier to suit your needs doesn’t have to be frightening.

Understanding The Rating Process

The first step toward getting coverage is to understand how the underwriting process works. Underwriters have the, rather difficult, task of accepting as much business as they can for their company, while minimizing the risk the company takes on. Too much or too little risk means that a company won’t be profitable.

When applying for life insurance – especially with a history of prostate cancer – you will be asked to fill out an application. The process can be lengthy, and will ask you to detail basic information about yourself, such as age, height, weight and smoking status. In most cases, you will be required to undergo a medical exam.

To an underwriter, certain diseases, hobbies, habits and even career choices present red flags. Any factor that is expected to lower your life expectancy will be a red flag to underwriters. It’s a complicated process to assess risk, and underwriters do their best to look at the entire picture before rating applicants into one of four categories:

Standard
Substandard
Premium (sometimes referred to as Preferred)
Declined

The higher your risk, the higher you can expect your premiums to be. Premiums will also be higher depending on your policy size and type.

Your Prostate Cancer History

The reason we are sharing all of this information with you is because it helps to think of your characteristics in terms of “risks” when applying for life insurance with a history of prostate cancer. If you were an underwriter and saw the word “cancer” on an application, would you automatically see the client as a risk?

Not exactly.

Prostate cancer, especially, grows so slowly that it may not pose a risk to the applicant’s life expectancy, particularly if it was caught during an early detection screening and you are following your doctor’s prescribed method of treatment.

If you have had prostate cancer in the past and are in remission, an underwriter may impose an additional fee – called a flat extra – onto your premium. These fees are usually charged per $1,000 of the policy and over a set term. After the term ends, you may be able to qualify for better prices, depending on your doctor’s prognosis.

The same goes for prostate cancer recurrence; it is not an automatic decline. Instead, the patient’s overall health and prognosis are assessed. The stage and grade of the cancer will weigh heavily on an applicant’s risk classification if he has experienced recurrence, as will the treatment options chosen.

For example, an individual who chooses to undergo surgery may be classified at a higher risk level due to the complications associated with this form of treatment.

What About Family History?

Unfortunately, yours is not the only history that will be assessed when you apply for life insurance coverage.

Men are twice as likely to develop prostate cancer if their brother or father has had the disease. If you have had prostate cancer, but there is not family history of the disease and you are in remission, your risk may be skewed more favorably.

Additionally, the correlations between prostate cancer risks and family history lessen as you move away from your immediate family. If you have had a history of prostate cancer and your distant male relatives are the first familial link to the disease, you may also qualify for a better risk class.

There are also links between breast cancer in mothers and prostate cancer; however, more research is still being done into this correlation. In some cases, your carrier will want to know if your father or brother are deceased and the causes. If either has passed away due to prostate cancer, your risk might increase.

Seek Expert Advice

It is important to understand that, even with a history of cancer, you can find life insurance coverage. This is because all carriers assess risk on a different scale.

This can be particularly frustrating if you don’t know which carriers will take on your risk. You may be faced with many slamming doors and high premiums before finding the right company. Shopping for life insurance, similar to any undertaking, requires a lot of patience before finding the best option for you and your family.

However, there is a shortcut to finding this option.

If your history with cancer is adding uncertainty to your life insurance search, you should seek the expert advice of an expert agent. Agents are beneficial because, not only can they think like an underwriter, they know the culture of each of the companies they work with.

This means that they know which companies have had success in insuring cases like yours and which companies will be willing to provide adequate coverage at a reasonable rate.

Additionally, everyone’s situation is unique and agents know this. A reputable agent will work with a number of highly-rated insurers in order to provide you with options to suit your needs. Options, especially for clients with a history of prostate cancer, are necessary, because it allows you to competitively shop and compare quotes.

Not just any agent will do, either. If you have had a history of prostate cancer, your best bet is to seek out an agent with expert knowledge about prostate cancer. We are continuously researching and learning about prostate cancer so that we can accurately communicate your risk to underwriters and carriers.

Underwriters and carriers can assess risk as an overall picture, but this picture leaves out some of the details. For example, there are several effective and noninvasive treatments for prostate cancer that will lower your risk – even if your cancer has recurred. The difference between declines and good rates are often filling in these gaps for underwriters.

It also helps that our agents build personal rapport with you, the client, so there is no doubt whose best interests we are working toward.

A history of prostate cancer should never stand in the way of providing your family with adequate protection. We are here to represent you and to provide you with the best options in the industry. Fill out our instant quote form of give us a ring today and let us help you get covered.