Life Insurance Medical Exam

Once you have decided to purchase your life insurance, the insurance company may require you to take a medical exam.

The medical exam is paid for by the insurance company.

Why do they make you take a medical exam?

The main reason is to determine how much premium to charge you for your policy. And, decide if you are healthy enough for them to insure you.

If the insurer decides you are likely to die at an early age, they will want to receive more premium for your policy. If they believe you will live longer, they will charge you less premium, because you will be around longer to continue paying your premiums.

Life insurance companies use two sources of information to help them accurately judge how long they expect you to live. They use Longevity Charts and your Medical Exam, medical history and your family’s medical history.

Longevity charts are statistics that show the mortality rates, or death rates of a group of people. These rates can be based on age, gender, race, country, occupation, or any number of other factors. These rates help the insurance company decide what risk they are taking by choosing to offer you a life insurance policy.

For example, if the longevity chart shows that a woman age 25 lives longer on average than a man age 25, the insurer would be taking a higher risk insuring the man. That’s why life insurance for children is so affordable. The risk of a child dying is much lower than for an adult. So the life insurance company doesn’t have to charge as much premium to insure a child for life insurance.

Your medical exam and medical history of you and your family (parents) is another factor in deciding how much risk you are for a life insurance company to insure you. Most exams are completed in your home or office. If the insurer requires additional tests, they may need to be completed at a hospital or clinic.

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• Your personal medical history
• Your family’s medical history
• Name, address and phone number to contact your primary doctor
• Your Lifestyle Habits including exercise, diet, smoking, alcohol use, and recreational drug use
• How much life insurance you want to purchase

• Measure your height and weight
• Test your blood pressure and your pulse
• Take blood to perform blood work tests to check cholesterol levels, glucose, protein, diabetes, HIV and other illnesses
• Urine tests to check your glucose levels, protein levels, creatine and illegal drugs such as cocaine

After you have taken your medical exam the life insurance company will review the results and decide if you meet their health requirements and what premium to charge you for your life insurance policy. It may take 2-3 months for this information to be received, reviewed and a decision made on your policy.

If you failed the medical exam and are declined coverage, or you think an error was made you can and should ask the insurance company to send you a copy of the medical exam results to you and/or your doctor.

If you failed because of a health-related problem you can ask your doctor about it. Or, if you failed the exam because of a mistake by the insurance company, you and your doctor and review the error and have it corrected as soon as possible. You want any errors corrected so they don’t stay on your medical record, because you may be declined for life insurance by another insurance company because of the error.

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Is a physical exam required for life insurance? Learn more about the physical exam process, and what it involves.

Or, Review our life insurance medical exam tips to help you get the best results on your life insurance medical exam.