Having RA can affect your Mortgage | Arthritis Information

Arg! When I got a newer car a while back I couldn't get insurance to cover the loan if I died because I have RA. Now while refinancing my house I find out the RA means I am no longer eligible for the life insurance for the loan. I can undertand not being able to get disability coverage on a loan, but I'm not ready to kick the bucket quite yet

Anyone else have a lovely list of "not eligible" perks due to RA?

K-Lynn

How did they find out that you had it?

The questions about health are asked by the person filling out the paperwork. If you answer the questions honestly they ask a few follow-up questions until they ask about your "diagnosis". They look at their little list and decline the coverage. If I didn't answer the questions honestly I'd have a problem signing the line that states I answered the questions honestly. It also didn't help that my hands were so swollen I could barely hold the pen.

K-Lynn

K-Lynn, why do you have to have life insurance for your mortgage loan? I
am refinancing right now and I have not been asked anything like that. You
have a disability and I'm not sure but I don't think they can discriminate. Are
you a cosigner on the loan? If so, the other person on the loan should be
enough. I have just never heard of life insurance on a mortgage loan.
Please let me know. I refinanced my mortgage after I got RA and they didn't ask me any questions about my health. They just made sure I had the resources to pay the mortgage.Haven't had that problem either.

Life insurance on a loan may not be necessary, but it would make sense in a lot of situations.

It also makes (unfortunate) sense that insurance programs can "discriminate" based on your health. That actually describes the work and business of insurance--"discriminating" among levels of risk and assessing financial value according to risk.

For example, I want to get long term care coverage for my husband and I this year. I've been thinking about it for some time, but we're a bit younger than when people typically begin this kind of coverage. Shoulda done it sooner. I expect to be able to get coverage for my husband but not for me now that I have the RA.

My mother is uninsurabale for long term care coverage because of a congenital heart condition, even though she's fully functional. My mother in law is uninsurable because of an arrhythmia.

Certain conditions are statistically linked with too much likelihood that the company would lose more than they stand to gain by insuring you. And insurance is a business, not a public service or charity. That doesn't make it immoral or blamefully heartless. I have my share of beefs with the insurance industry, but the essential discriminatory nature of the business is a logical rather than immoral one.

I wonder what that does to you if you already had the mortgage/automobile life and disabilty insurance first and then you get diagnosed with RA. Ta2d....that exact thing happened with my father. He was healthy when he and my mother bought a new home and both got the life and disability insurance on the mortgage. A few years later he got liver cancer. The insurance company tried their best to not pay the mortage off after he died. They said that he knew he had cancer when he signed for the insurance. The thing was though, he hadn't been to a doctor since he was a small child. Was deathly afraid of them from something that had happened back when he was a kid. Anyway...all my mother had to do to prove that he in no way knew he had cancer at the time of signing was, to get her doctor to show dates of when he went to the doctor and the date when he found out he had cancer. So in the end, the insurance company had to pay the mortgage. I used to work in the Claims Department for a life insurance company. When a new claim comes in, it is gone over thoroughly and checked to see if there is anything which could potentially disqualify it for payment. If it is a large policy (over 0,000) it is given a great deal of scrutiny.

Anytime someone dies a short time after a policy is written, it is going to be red flagged. Sometimes people do try to lie and get insurance without disclosing serious health problems. They think that as long as they get the policy and pay their premiums, they have beaten the system. Sadly, if it can be proved that they had a health issue they didn't disclose, the only thing their beneficiaries will receive is a refund of the premiums paid.
Hillhoney39092.3515277778

Lorster-There are different options you can choose with a home loan. You can have the bank pay your taxes and charge you for it OR you can pay taxes directly yourself. You can "insure" the reamaining balance of your loan against disability or death IF you qualify. My parents have always had insurance on their home loan in case anything happened to my dad. Unfortunately I'm the one and only name on my loan--so if I die before the house is paid for the bank will probably end up with it unless someone can sell it quickly and pay off the loan.

K-Lynn

So what happens when you go to work and get a new position and you get
the standard life insurance coverage...like 1 or 2 times your yearly pay. But
if you opt for 3 x your pay, you have to do a medical questionaire. Does this
matter? I thought that once you had group life, it was a group coverage. Is
this not true because I had to quit my job because of my RA last year and I
lost my group coverage. I thought if I ever got well enough to go back to
full time, I could go back on the group plan and unless I opted for the 3x
salary plan, they didn't ask questions. This sux. We were going to get home insurance. I wonder......... Lorster, if you do go back to work and your employer provides life insurance as an employee benefit, you will be covered automatically for the amount provided by your employer.

When the problem arises for life insurance is if you are applying for insurance and it is going through an underwriting process. That's when we all run into trouble. And that applies to health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, etc. They use anything and everything to eliminate risk. There are companies who offer high-risk insurance, however, it is incredibly expensive. There are also the companies that offer the insurance to everyone, without an exam. Those policies have very low coverage amounts, but certainly could provide for funeral expenses. Some folks buy several policies of this type from different insurance companies to build up coverage to a higher level, but it is certainly not an ideal solution.

Hillhoney39093.3744328704Man, that is a relief because after reading the posts yesterday, I thought that
by quitting my position last year, I had totally screwed myself for chances of
getting it again. I was having huge regrets about getting a diagnosis. I stil
do not understand why this disease puts us at such high risk when it comes
to life insurance. I know it cuts about 3 years off our lives but I hope that
number goes down as drug companies/stem cell research may come up with
a remission. If a person is cured of cancer, do the insurance companies still
consider them a risk? I wonder about things like this. I feel that insurance
companies have the ball in their court...all the time. I see this as a nurse,
talking with patients who are upset because they are vomiting as we are
wheeling them out to their cars, because their benefits have run out and the
hospital has to let them go....or eat the bill. Ok, i better not get started
about health insurance this morning :)Every time you go to the doctors office and file an insurance claim, the info goes into a National Insurance database somewhere. "They" have all this info they can get at a click of their little fingers on their computers. It also scares me that "they" want all medical info on people on a "medical" database. "They" say if you are ever sick, they can pull up all your med records--every test, every doctor's appointment, every diagnoses--right or wrong--every x-ray, etc.,etc. If used like that, maybe a good thing, however, you don't know who sees that and how it will be used against you. My insurance coverage is excellent, but it is a self-insured plan, and I am scared to death, my employer will look at who is using it and try to get rid of the expensive ones--me with RA--to keep costs down. But back to the databases--Big Brother is watching us all. America is not America anymore.

If your employer is offering a new life insurance plan, everyone is offered an opportunity to buy at that time up to a certain amount, no questions asked. If over that amount, you must prove your insurability.

Also on the health insurance, I believe "pre-existing" conditions are covered after 2 years of having the insurance.