There’s been a lot of buzz in the news lately concerning insurance and preexisting conditions. Of course, most of that talk has been with the health care industry and major medical insurance, but preexisting conditions affect your term life insurance in a major way, too. And, unlike medical insurance, there isn’t likely to be any new legislation that changes it.

You see, the whole idea behind term life insurance is that the insurance company is betting that you are not going to die within the term, allowing them to keep all of the premiums you have paid, without having to pay anything out. Usually it’s a reasonably safe bet.

After all, most people who buy insurance frankly hope that they lose the “bet.” Most of us would much rather lose out on our insurance premiums than die. We buy the insurance hoping that we live much too long for anyone to ever collect it, but still hedging our bets so that we can provide for our families if we do die within the term, which most of us set to be roughly equal to the years we expect to be working and raising kids.

Of course, if we have medical conditions that could be considered life threatening or life shortening, the insurance company runs a greater risk that we will die within the term. Since the premiums paid for a term life insurance policy are normally very small compared to the death benefit the company has to pay if you die within the term, insurance companies get very nervous about insuring people with some medical conditions.

In some cases, you can still buy life insurance with health problems, but because the insurance company is taking more risk, they’re going to charge you more. Unfortunately, with some kinds of pre existing conditions, you may not be able to buy life insurance at all.

You may be asking, what does this have to do with me? I’m in good health. Well, congratulations on your health, but the whole point is that you need to go ahead and buy your life insurance while you’re healthy, because you never know when a routine physical could turn into a diagnosis that would stop you from being able to get any life insurance.

The good news with life insurance is that, as long as you didn’t lie when you were applying, the insurance company can’t cancel your policy because of a medical condition you or your doctor discover later.

Photo via conorwithonen