I sit here in my office just outside of beautiful Salida, Colorado and I wonder how in the world anyone could be affected by stress or anxiety or depression. That stuff seems like it should be an East coast problem where there are cities crammed into cities and everything is going 1000 miles per hour. People are gone by 7 in the morning and aren’t home until 9 at night. They spend 30% of their workday in traffic. Yikes!
But wait. I remember me. I take Prozac. It started when I was really down because I had this great website and blog and I was pouring my heart and soul into it and my business just kept going downhill. Plenty of people came to my website. They read my blog posts. They referenced me in the Wall St Journal and I was asked to write articles every few months for trade publications because my blog was so well known. My opinion apparently mattered.
But I didn’t have many customers coming from all of that notoriety. Business was going downhill and I was losing money and I was just sick about it. I was depressed, stressed and anxious. In Colorado. My business has turned around famously in no small part to one of the most talented and fair SEO people in the world living in Ft. Collins. Now I watch the nightly news on Denver Channel 7 and at least here I feel isolated from all of that. But I continue taking Prozac because now I am working 13 hours a day and need to hire help and, well, it helps when I have to drive through Denver to get to Wyoming to visit Mom. I still maintain, in spite of the poor example that I am, that life here in Colorful Colorado has to be easier than other places, but the truth is that we are living in a stressful world.
And to add to the quagmire, life insurance underwriters living in the exact some conditions, taking the exact same medications think it is their job to pass judgement on those of us who are at least prudently using some of the coping mechanisms available. This first really hit home for me as a life insurance agent when I got a call from a physician. She was in her mid 30′s, in perfect health, and she needed life insurance because she was making a lot of money and had a husband and children that would suffer a bit if she died unexpectedly. So she had gone to Selectquote and applied for life insurance. Now Selectquote is kind of like a life insurance grinder mill. You throw a client in one end and whatever comes out the other end, well, it is what it is. If it worked out great, that was great. If it didn’t work out so well, that was great too. They had done their job and no matter what the result, it was great…..to them.
But this doctor had some severe underwriting baggage. During a several month period while she was a resident (anyone watch Grey’s Anatomy) she took Zoloft because she was a bit stressed. She was fine after that and it was 7 years previous, but the company that Selectquote stuck her with approved her at a standard rate because of her history of an anxiety disorder. I’m not making this up. She took Zoloft for 10 months while in residency, never before and never since and her quote from Selectquote of about $1400 a year for a $2 million dollar 30 year term policy blossomed to more than double at $2900 a year. Wait. Did I say severe underwriting baggage? Anyone going through residency that doesn’t take something to keep from losing it is just odd.
She called and asked me to shop the case for her and we were not only able to get better than a standard rate, but a better preferred plus rate at just over $1300 a year. Selectquote was happy with their outcome and tried hard to get her to put it in force. And I think they were happy when she bought a policy through me because then they didn’t have to try to convince her to be happy anymore. It freed them up to go on to the next case they didn’t care about.
Bottom line. Minor mood disorders are one of the most mistreated impaired risk life insurance categories. People take blood pressure medication or cholesterol medication to control problems that can kill them and they get preferred plus rates. But take Prozac to manage the real world and you’re a standard mortality risk. If you have any questions or have run into this kind of underwriting abuse, call or email me directly. Let’s talk.
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