By Victor Freedman
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As an insurance agent, I have to follow certain rules and regulations that I may not like all the time, but I have to work within them. I need to ask a lot of questions to match a client with the right insurance product. As we talk, my mind is searching, and by the time we are just about done, I have a pretty good idea of which companies to use and what the approximate cost to the client will be. But then I always have to ask two questions I don’t like to ask:
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• Do you smoke?
• What is your height and weight?
Insurance companies are very interested in both questions. If you smoke, the cost to you automatically doubles. The weight issue is related to the charts that insurance companies use. They look at the weight, then look at their charts, and if you are 20 pounds above what the chart says you should be, they consider you overweight, and the cost to insure you goes up.
The good news is that you can reverse the decision in both cases if you take appropriate action: stop smoking and stay nonsmoking for over a year and get your weight down to industry standards.
I had a client whose height was just under 6 feet and who weighed 385 pounds. Worse for him, he was a smoker. His family had been after him for a long time to lose weight and quit smoking. When he called me and we’d gone over everything and it was time to talk about money, he was shocked to find out how costly his habit was to his ability to get insurance. On top of his smoking, his weight put his health at risk. (A doctor had called him a ‘stroke waiting to happen’). So it was then and there that he decided to quit smoking and address his weight problem.
And he did. He quit smoking and lost a whole lot of weight. He now eats healthy and his energy levels are much higher. He’s made exercise a part of his life, too. The best part, from my perspective: his rates took a nose dive and his insurance costs were much less.
You never think of thin as being a weight problem, but it can be. I think people know all about the problems of being overweight. (The media constantly pounds us with information in this regard.) But insurance companies find that the same problems that exist with an overweight person can also be found in a person who is excessively thin. The problems can range from circulatory issues to heart, kidney and/or bladder problems, and so forth.
Example: A man 5’8″ tall weighs 105 pounds. The insurance charts say a person of this height should weigh approximately 140 to 150 lbs. The industry feels that if you’re too thin you’re probably sick. People with anorexia or bulimia, for example, “starve” their bodies in order to attain what they perceive to be an acceptable thinness and in doing so, they are harming their body and its functions by depriving the nutrients it needs. There may be other reasons why someone is excessively thin, but as far as the insurance companies view it, weight below the “norm” indicates illness.
There are ways to deal with being overweight, likewise there are things that can be done if one is too thin. If a person is overweight that individual can go on some form of diet. If one is excessively thin, you need to have a physician diagnose the cause and prescribe the proper treatment or diet. In some cases the thinness may be caused, as with obesity, by genetics; but it still requires a physician to decide.
Insurance companies evaluate each individual in relation to how much risk they are to insure. The higher the risk they determine you are, the higher the cost. It’s just how the industry is. The good news is that even if you smoke and aren’t the industry’s standard in terms of weight, you are still insurable. But improving your physical health can improve your financial health as well.
Victor Freedman is an insurance and benefits planner who lives in Hartford, Connecticut. If you have questions you’d like Victor to answer about insurance and health financing, you can e-mail him at insurancebyvic@yahoo.com or call 860-246-4519.
