Life insurance policies are legal agreements between you and an insurance company wherein the carrier will be obligated to pay your heirs if you die. Because life insurance policies often deal with significant amounts of money, the company will go to great lengths to properly evaluate its financial risk. Aside from many obvious external and visible factors that may affect your lifespan, your medical history is an important aspect in determining your premium.
Relevance
Insurance companies will ask questions about, and often request validation regarding, your previous medical history. Treatment for and diagnosis of certain ailments can often be correlated with a statistically increased risk of an early death, as compared to an average person without such conditions. If your medical history contains relevant data about illnesses or diseases that the carrier believes make you an increased risk, the cost of your insurance will be adjusted accordingly to offset the higher financial liability.
Paramedical Exam
Most insurance companies require applicants to undergo a brief physical checkup called a paramedical exam. This consists of basic physical measurements like height, weight and blood pressure, and also the collection of blood and urine samples. Your measurements are viewed alongside a battery of laboratory tests that reveal your current state of health. Together with information you provided regarding medical history, the paramedical exam serves to validate your claims and identify previously unknown maladies.
Attending Physician Statement
If any part of your life insurance application or paramedical exam reveals an issue that could potentially indicate a shorter-than-average lifespan, the insurance carrier may request an Attending Physician Statement, or APS. The APS is a questionnaire mailed to a medical facility or physician with instructions for the doctor to describe the specific ailment that was cause for concern. Your medical history and patient files may be provided to the insurance carrier and considered as part of the underwriting process.
Family Medical History
A section of every life insurance application asks several questions about the medical history of your family members. Clear connections have been made between the presence of certain life-threatening conditions and genetic development, and life insurance companies will consider your relatives' issues as indicators of your own risk. Application questions clearly detail the conditions about which the carrier is concerned, and your answers should only apply to relatives genetically related to you; in-laws, stepparents and adopted siblings are never included in the family history questions on a life insurance application.
Impact
Your medical history could have a significant impact on your ability to purchase affordable life insurance. In fact, if your medical history is excessively involved, a carrier may actually decline to provide you life insurance at all. An extremely minimal medical history, one without the presence of conditions that concern the carrier, simply serves to validate the company's initial price quote and help ensure a proper premium is charged. Conversely, medical records overflowing with treatments and diagnoses for issues that are known to become problematic and result in death will definitely raise the price of your policy.
