Life Insurance and Alcohol Use: Buyer’s Guide
If you’re looking for a life insurance policy, you may be surprised to discover what can impact your life insurance cost. Alcohol use can play a major role in what you end up paying for coverage, especially if you have a history of excessive alcohol use.
Excessive alcohol consumption may cause a number of health and behavioral problems that increase your insurance company’s risk of insuring you and results in you paying a higher life insurance cost for your policy.
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Underwriting Alcohol for Life Insurance
When you apply for life insurance, underwriters review the complete application and all the records that go along with it. They then decide how much coverage and at what cost to offer the applicant, unless they decide to deny or post-pone the application.
In regards to alcohol, the underwriter will use medical records (especially those related to treatment for substance abuse and psychiatric illness), social profile, motor vehicle reports, laboratory results, and physical findings in order to assess the risk associated with excessive alcohol consumption. A blood test, carbohydrate deficient transferring (CDT), can sometimes be used in underwriting to identify those consuming excess alcohol.
The following is a list of complications from excessive alcohol consumption that are significant to life insurance underwriting:
Cardiac: Atrial fibrillation, cardiomyopathy, hypertension
Nervous system: Blackouts, seizures, delirium tremens (DTs), peripheral neuropathy, tremors, brain damage, psychosis, balance and gait impairments
Gastrointestinal: Fatty liver, hepatitis, cirrhosis, pancreatitis, gastrointestinal bleeding (sometimes massive) due to gastritis, varices, and esophagitis, cancer, diarrhea
Bone marrow: Abnormal blood counts including anemia
Psychiatric and social: Depression, anxiety, suicide, violent behavior, marital/occupational/familial problems, abuse of other drugs as well as alcohol
Miscellaneous: Aspiration pneumonia, accidents and trauma. Alcoholism is a primary, chronic disease with genetic, psycho-social, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations. The disease can be progressive and fatal. It is characterized by impaired control over drinking, preoccupation with the drug alcohol, use of alcohol despite adverse consequences, and distortions in thinking, most notably denial. Each of these symptoms may be continuous or periodic.
Life insurance underwriters also negatively rate for binge drinking and risky drinking. “Binge drinking” is defined as heavy drinking to the point of intoxication on a periodic basis. “Risky drinking” is more than 14 drinks per week or more than 4 per occasion, for men, and more than 7 drinks per week or more than 3 per occasion, for women.
If you are a moderate to heavy alcohol user or if you have a history of alcohol abuse, life insurance underwriters will typically request the following:
Alcohol Questionnaire Form – This form will ask you a few questions such as:
Have you ever been in any legal trouble?
What is your current level of alcohol consumption?
Do you currently participate in any groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous?
Motor Vehicle Records – The underwriters will review your driving history to discover if there is a history of drunk-driving arrests or reckless driving.
Attending Physician’s Statement – Examining your health report can unveil a number of alcohol abuse indicators. For example, a history of pancreatitis in a younger individual is highly indicative of heavy drinking.
Risk Factors and Life Insurance Cost
Besides the risks associated with excess alcohol intake, the underwriter also considers favorable historical items such as:
active participation in Alcoholics Anonymous,
voluntary initiation of treatment,
single period of treatment or hospitalization,
maintenance of stable family life,
sustained employment,
financial solvency, and
good health without reports of violence or arrests.
If the individual is able to successfully stop drinking alcohol without relapse, after seven to ten years, the mortality rate approaches that of the general population.
