To develop diabetes later on in life when you already have life insurance coverage is a completely different scenario to be in, compared to applying for life insurance when you have been living with diabetes for quite some time. Those that belong to the latter group, will often give up on insurance altogether, because it may seem hopeless at times due to the high fee structures.
Fortunately, many policies have changed in the last few years and there are opportunities for diabetics to apply for life insurance with high rates of success in the UK today. However, you still have to be aware of the fact that availing life insurance with diabetes is not cheap. The good news is, premiums do not have to be as expensive as you might have been led to believe by insurance agents either.
Life Insurance with Diabetes: What Are My Odds?
There was a time when diabetes life insurance was not available easily, but that time is long gone. Today, due to multiple policy changes enforced by both the government and the private insurance sector itself, most diabetics do get the approval they need for life insurance. This holds true for both Type I and Type II diabetes, so successful application is not exactly an issue here, as the odds are pretty good.
The Main Issue: High Premiums
The main issue with life insurance policies for diabetics is that they can be extraordinarily expensive. This is not just an issue that plagues diabetics only, but pretty much anyone with a potentially deadly disease on their medical report. Depending on the physical condition of a diabetic, their age, additional medical conditions, etc. the cost of life insurance will vary to some degree. What is almost certain is the fact that having diabetes listed on your medical report as a pre-existing condition will result in higher premiums in almost all cases.
Is It Possible to Lower the Cost of Diabetes Life Insurance?
Different providers across the United Kingdom have different fee structures for their respective life insurance policies, so it is most certainly possible to lower the cost of premiums. Whether you have diabetes or not, competition within the life insurance segment is quite fierce, which always is good news for the consumers.
A platform like Im-Insured let’s people maximise their advantageous positions as customers, in light of the competition between the top insurance providers within the UK. Look here to know more about getting cheap life insurance with diabetes specifically, after comparing various quotes from multiple providers on their intuitive platform.
Why is Diabetes a Problem for Life Insurance Providers?
It’s true that diabetes is not a lethal disease like some forms of cancer, AIDS, early onset Alzheimer’s and the like. Even then, diabetes is potentially a deadly disease when left uncontrolled and unsupervised. In some of the extreme cases, even that might not be enough unfortunately, to prevent several associated conditions such as kidney disease, heart disease and cerebral strokes.
As many of these consequent conditions can cause death immediately or eventually, insurers tend to charge more than the usual, while providing life insurance coverage to diabetics. For the most part though, it is possible to lead a healthy, long life with diabetes, as long as the patient’s blood sugar is always monitored and kept below/above dangerous levels with diet control, insulin and other medication, as prescribed by the supervising physician.
Type I Diabetes: Higher Premiums?
Having Type I diabetes almost always means that the patient will have to pay a higher premium for their life insurance coverage than patients with Type II diabetes. This is owed to the fact that Type I diabetes is far deadlier than Type II diabetes. The underlying autoimmune disease destroys all the pancreatic beta cells which produce insulin, rendering the patient completely unable to produce insulin on their own. This means that their condition is potentially lethal if it is not monitored and accordingly injected with insulin on a daily basis.
Having Type I diabetes also increases one’s chances of developing other consequent deadly conditions such as the ones mentioned earlier, because their insulin production capabilities are generally lost completely by the time Type I diabetics reach adolescence and sometimes even earlier than that.
Gestational diabetes is the only type of temporary diabetes in existence. In a majority of the cases, the patient will slowly lose all signs of being a diabetic, post childbirth. What this means is that having gestational diabetes should not be a factor that should affect one’s life insurance premium costs or their chances of being approved for life insurance. However, it’s best not to apply for life insurance if you do have gestational diabetes, and just wait a few months post-delivery before making applying for life insurance. There would be no point in putting diabetes on your life insurance medical report if it’s going to disappear soon anyway.
