Burial insurance with COPD

Nothing here is medical advice and nothing here should change how anyone manages a health condition. Underwriting rules differ from one insurance company to the next and change without notice. The outcome of any application is decided by the carrier on the individual case, not by a website.

The short answer

Where the condition is mild, has been stable for a long stretch, has not led to a hospital admission and does not involve oxygen, several companies will write it at level benefit. Where oxygen is in daily use, the realistic outcome across most of the market is a guaranteed issue policy with a two year waiting period on natural death.

Where COPD lands, tier by tier

Three shapes of policy exist. Level benefit pays the full amount from day one. Graded pays a reduced amount for the first year or two and the full amount afterwards. Guaranteed issue asks no health questions and returns premiums plus interest if natural death occurs inside the first two years. All three pay in full from day one for accidental death. More on the three tiers.

General market patterns rather than a promise about any company. Every application is underwritten on its own facts.

Oxygen is the dividing line

If there is one thing to understand about COPD underwriting, it is this. Supplemental oxygen is asked about on virtually every level benefit application, it is very often asked with no time limit attached, and a yes normally ends the level benefit conversation. There is a fuller page on oxygen and underwriting because the question reaches well beyond COPD.

Two clarifications save people a great deal of money, because both are answered wrongly all the time.

A CPAP or BiPAP machine is not oxygen. Continuous positive airway pressure for sleep apnea moves air, it does not deliver supplemental oxygen, and most applications either exclude it explicitly or ask about it as a separate item. People who say yes to the oxygen question when they mean a CPAP machine give up a level benefit policy they qualified for.

Inhalers and nebulisers are not oxygen either. A rescue inhaler, a maintenance inhaler and a nebuliser used at home are medication delivery. They are asked about in their own right and they do not by themselves take a case out of level benefit.

What the underwriter actually asks

• The year of diagnosis, and whether it was called COPD, emphysema or chronic bronchitis.
• Whether oxygen is used at home, how many hours a day, and on many forms whether it has ever been used or ever been advised.
• How many times a hospital admission or an emergency room visit has happened for breathing in the last twelve months, and in the last two years. The count matters as much as the fact.
• Whether oral steroids such as prednisone have been prescribed recently, and how often. Repeated short courses read as a condition that is flaring rather than settled.
• Which inhalers and nebuliser medications are in use, and whether the list has changed recently.
• Whether you use tobacco or nicotine in any form now, and if not, when you stopped.
• Whether there is also congestive heart failure, a heart attack, an irregular heartbeat, or a history of lung cancer. The COPD questions and the cardiac questions are read together.
• Whether you need help with activities of daily living, use a wheelchair for a chronic condition, or receive home health or hospice care. These sit at the top of most applications and apply whatever the underlying cause.
• Whether any test, scan, procedure or specialist referral has been advised and not yet completed.

The look back periods that matter

Smoking, and why it costs twice

Continuing to smoke with a COPD diagnosis is the largest single variable in this part of the market, and it costs in two separate ways. First the rate class, since tobacco use puts anyone into a higher priced band regardless of health. Then the underwriting decision itself, because a number of companies treat current smoking alongside COPD as a combination they will not write at level benefit at all.

Whether to stop is a matter for you and your doctor and not for an insurance page. What is worth knowing is how the market counts it. Most applications ask about tobacco use in the last twelve months for rate class purposes, so tobacco rates generally persist for a year after stopping with most companies, and a smaller number use a longer window. The underwriting question about COPD severity is separate and can improve sooner.

What makes an application better or worse

Better. A diagnosis that is several years old and has not changed. No admissions and no emergency visits. No oxygen, now or before. A stable medication list. No steroid courses recently. No heart failure alongside it. Full independence in daily activities. A height and weight inside the company build chart.

Worse. Daily oxygen. Two or more admissions in a short period. Repeated steroid courses. Current smoking. COPD paired with heart disease, especially congestive heart failure. Needing help with washing, dressing or moving about. Anything a doctor has advised that has not yet been done, because an open investigation is read as an unknown rather than as a good sign.

How much cover to buy

Match the policy to the actual bill. A burial with the cemetery included commonly totals around $15,395. The funeral home portion, a service with viewing and a metal casket included, is nearer $8,300. A cremation with a service is about $6,280 and a direct cremation about $2,202. The calculator gives your own state figure in a few seconds.