Life Insurance For Sickle Cell Patients
Life Insurance For Sickle Cell Patients: Can you get life insurance with sickle cell? Of course, when you apply for insurance, you don’t want to deal with problems and jargon. If you have sickle cell disease, you will need to answer some specific questions about your health in order to purchase insurance. This is something we do every day and we are here to help you get the Life Insurance For Sickle Cell Patients you need.
Things we should know:
- When were you diagnosed with sickle cell anemia?
- Do you have to take medicines regularly?
- Do you need blood transfusions?
- Were you hospitalized because of sickle cell anemia?
- Have you had a sickle cell crisis?
Once we have this information, we can start looking for the right insurer to meet your needs. Life insurance for people with sickle cell disease may be available from some insurers in the UK. It is not possible to say which life insurance companies are best for someone with sickle cell disease. The treatment you receive and the number of seizures (if any) you have had play a big role in which insurer is right for you.
When you apply for sickle cell insurance, it is very likely that insurers will increase your policy premiums, this is known as non-standard conditions. You will likely find that the insurer you turn to for life insurance coverage will want to see a report from your primary care physician to confirm your diagnosis and how your overall health is. Often this is just a simple paper report based on your medical records, it doesn’t necessarily mean a medical exam needs to be done. If you want a large amount of life insurance, like everyone else, you may be required by the insurer to undergo a medical examination, usually at your own expense.
Don’t worry if you’ve been turned down for life insurance in the past. We have access to many insurers in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and internationally, and have also created specific routes to give you access to specialist insurers.
What is sickle cell disease?
You must first know exactly what sickle cell disease is before applying for life insurance with the medical condition.
An understanding of your condition and its most common symptoms will help you understand how a life insurance company’s insurers will assess and categorize your application.
One of the most important things to understand about sickle cell disease is that the name is an umbrella term for several related conditions.
Each type of sickle cell disease is inherited and affects red blood cells. The differences between the conditions largely have to do with how red blood cells are affected.
For example, all people with sickle cell disease have an abnormal amount of hemoglobin in their red blood cells.
The abnormal amount of hemoglobin is caused by an abnormal hemoglobin gene that is passed from parent to child and is inherited.
Some people inherit only one abnormal hemoglobin gene. This is known as the sickle cell trait. Others inherit two abnormal hemoglobin genes. This is known as sickle cell anemia.
While both situations are serious, the second situation is usually much worse. Those with two abnormal hemoglobin genes have a type of sickle cell disease called sickle cell anemia.
Sickle cell anemia is not only the most common form of sickle cell disease but also the most serious. The symptoms are more powerful and the long-term outlook is less positive.
There are two other forms of sickle cell disease, although they are much less common than sickle cell disease and sickle cell disease.
Because people with sickle cell disease often never experience any symptoms, we will mainly focus on sickle cell disease below. We will use the term sickle cell anemia interchangeably with sickle cell disease.
People with sickle cell disease experience an interrupted supply of oxygen throughout the body due to abnormal amounts of hemoglobin interpreting the flow.
Symptoms are usually severe. They include regular anemia, periodic episodes of pain, painful swelling, frequent infections, and vision problems. Some children and adolescents even experience delayed growth, including delayed puberty.
A variety of complications can result from sickle cell anemia, including stroke, acute chest syndrome, pulmonary hypertension, organ damage, blindness, leg ulcers, kidney stones, and priapism.
It is important to seek medical attention as soon as you first notice any of the symptoms associated with sickle cell disease.
Fortunately, because it is a hereditary disease (which cannot be caught or passed on), it is usually diagnosed in childhood.
This early diagnosis is critical to providing appropriate treatment for the person with the disease as they age and begin to experience the full symptoms of the disease.
Life Insurance For Sickle Cell Patients
Having a medical condition is not easy; Not only can medical concerns affect your daily life, but they can also make it difficult for you to qualify for major life insurance. Life insurance companies treat every disease and condition differently, but if you have sickle cell traits, read on to learn more about applying for high-risk life insurance.
Who Gets Sickle Cell Disease?
Sickle cell disease affects only those who inherit it from their parents.
To inherit sickle cell disease, both parents must carry a sickle cell gene. This means that both parents have sickle cell disease or sickle cell disease.
People with sickle cell traits generally do not experience the negative symptoms associated with sickle cell disease. This means that many people with the trait don’t even know they have it.
Because of this, many people don’t know that their child is at risk until after they are born and the symptoms begin to show.
While sickle cell disease can affect anyone, it is more common in black people in the United States.
Treatment for Sickle Cell Disease
While there are effective treatments for sickle cell disease (there is no cure, though), prevention is the best course of action.
That’s why couples who know they have a sickle cell trait should always talk to a genetic counselor before having a child.
There are also many things you can do to avoid complications if you have already had a child with sickle cell anemia. Chief among these is health maintenance in the form of immunizations, taking penicillin, and other work to prevent infection.
Screening tests and evaluations are also very important. It allows doctors to pinpoint the details of your sickle cell anemia to provide the best possible treatment.
The actual treatments for sickle cell disease largely involve the prevention of complications. Medications and blood transfusions are the most common. Sometimes a bone mound transplant is an option.
Questions they will ask you
Most of the life insurance application is spent answering various questions.
These questions are largely related to your overall health (including any medical conditions), as well as your family’s health history and lifestyle.
People with sickle cell disease can expect a variety of questions specifically related to this medical question.
First, the life insurance company will ask what type of sickle cell disease you have. They specifically want to know if you just have sickle cell trait or if you have sickle cell anemia.
People with sickle cell anemia will be asked several follow-up questions, including:
- When were you diagnosed with sickle cell anemia?
- What are your symptoms?
- Do you have complications from sickle cell anemia?
- What treatments and preventive measures have you taken?
- What is your prognosis for sickle cell anemia?
Those applying for traditional life insurance with sickle cell disease must also undergo a current medical examination.
Medical research is used by life insurance company insurers to ensure that the information on your application is accurate.
Can You Get Life Insurance With Sickle Cell?
Can you get life insurance with sickle cell? Thanks to modern medicine, sickle cell disease can be controlled and the risk of serious effects can be reduced. Many patients with sickle cell anemia receive preventive treatment such as using:
- Vaccination
- Preventive antibiotics
- Hydroxyurea/Hydroxycarbamide Medications
- Blood transfusion
These methods can dramatically reduce the health risks and high death rates that can occur in people with sickle cell disease. If you are successful in any of these treatment plans and do not experience any major symptoms or complications, you should qualify for one of several types of life insurance policies offered by life insurance companies.
It becomes more difficult, if not impossible, to get a life insurance company to take out a policy if you have or are experiencing acute and chronic complications. These problems can be serious and life-threatening. Some of the main potential problems are:
- Spleen sequestration crisis: When the spleen becomes enlarged, potentially fatal
- Acute chest syndrome: Two or more symptoms related to chest pain, the cause of many deaths from sickle cell disease.
- Aplastic crisis: When someone’s anemia worsens, it can suddenly be fatal
- Hemolytic crisis: a rapid drop in hemoglobin levels
- Vaso-occlusive crisis: obstruction of capillaries, it could be an emergency in the lungs
Each of these complications is considered serious and is a red flag for life insurance companies. They may disqualify you from receiving life insurance, but before you rule it out, speak with a trained life insurance professional. People with a more severe type of sickle cell disease may want to consider purchasing term life insurance from the top 10 latest expense carriers.
Life Insurance For Sickle Cell Patients – The Application And Approval Process
Knowing that you know what kind of questions you’ll be answering in your application, it’s time to talk about what to expect after you apply for life insurance for sickle cell patients.
Simply put, it involves a lot of waiting. The acceptance process takes 4-6 weeks with most life insurance companies.
The 4-6 week subscription period consists of subscribers reviewing their application and a medical exam to assess their risk.
At the end of this procedure, you will be informed whether or not you are eligible for coverage. If you qualify, you will also be told how much to pay each month for the coverage provided.
What happens if I apply for life insurance for sickle cell patients?
When you apply for life insurance, the agency looks at all aspects of your life, especially your health. Having sickle cell disease will draw more attention from a life insurance company. A life insurance agent will ask you several questions related to your sickle cell disease before you sign up for life insurance. To help you prepare for your life insurance application process, we’ve put together a list of potential questions to ask.
- When did you find out you had sickle cell anemia?
- Do you have sickle cell anemia or sickle cell disease?
- Have you had any serious complications from your sickle cell disease?
- Have you ever been hospitalized for sickle cell disease?
- Have you had a blood transfusion? If so, when?
- When was the last time you had symptoms? What symptoms did you have?
- Have you previously applied for a term life insurance policy?
- Have you had any diagnostic tests in the past year? If so, what were the results?
- Do you use preventive treatment?
- What is your treatment regimen?
- When was the last time you saw a specialist for your sickle cell disease?
- What was your prediction?
These questions help a life insurance company assess your level of risk. The insurer uses this to determine whether premature death is likely in your situation. The better your overall health, the more likely you are to be approved for a policy.
Your life insurance options
We’ll be honest with you: If you have sickle cell disease, your life insurance options are limited.
That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to qualify for traditional coverage, just that it’s much more difficult.
People with sickle cell anemia have a very low chance. Those who have experienced complications from the medical condition don’t have much of a chance.
However, those with sickle cell traits should be able to qualify for traditional coverage, at a preferential rate, as long as they are in good health.
Fortunately, there are several options available for those who may not qualify for traditional life insurance coverage. These include common alternatives such as a guaranteed death benefit.
Finding The Best Life Insurance For Sickle Cell Patients
The best thing to do to find life insurance if you have sickle cell disease is to sign up with several different carriers.
By registering with different providers you can compare your options. It also increases your chances of qualifying for coverage in the first place.
While finding life insurance for sickle cell disease is very difficult, it is by no means impossible.
What if I have experienced complications due to sickle cell anemia?
If you’ve had complications or if you’re unhealthy, it will be more difficult for you to get full life insurance. There are other options worth exploring. To learn more about your options, it’s best to talk to a life insurance expert. They can point you in the right direction.