Burial insurance with diabetes

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

Most people with type 2 diabetes managed on tablets, or on a moderate dose of insulin started later in life, with no complications and no recent hospital visit, are written at level benefit somewhere in the simplified issue market. That means the full death benefit is payable from the first day for any cause, with no waiting period.

What pushes an application down a tier is a short list, and it is worth knowing it before anyone starts asking. An amputation caused by diabetes. A diabetic coma or an episode of insulin shock. Kidney involvement, and above all dialysis. Insulin begun at a young age. A hospital admission for uncontrolled blood sugar inside the last year.

Where diabetes lands, tier by tier

Burial insurance comes in three shapes. Level benefit pays in full from day one. Graded pays a reduced amount in the first year or two and the full amount after. Guaranteed issue asks no health questions at all and refunds premiums with interest if death from natural causes happens inside the first two years. Accidental death is paid in full from day one on all three. There is more detail on how the three tiers differ.

General market patterns, not a promise about any company. Every application is underwritten on its own facts.

What the underwriter actually asks

• The year you were diagnosed, and how old you were at the time.
• Whether you take insulin, the year insulin started, and on some applications how many units a day. A daily total is asked about by a minority of companies, and a threshold in the region of fifty units a day appears on some forms.
• Whether you have ever been treated for diabetic coma, insulin shock, or a diabetic ulcer or sore that would not heal.
• Whether diabetes has affected the nerves, the eyes or the kidneys. Applications usually spell this out as nerve damage, eye damage and kidney damage rather than using the words neuropathy, retinopathy and nephropathy, so the question can be easy to answer too quickly.
• Whether you have had an amputation caused by diabetes, or been advised to have one.
• Whether you have kidney disease, receive dialysis, or have had or been listed for a kidney transplant.
• Whether you have also had a heart attack, a stroke, bypass surgery, a stent, or poor circulation in the legs. Diabetes combined with cardiovascular disease is a paired question on many forms and is treated far more seriously than either one alone.
• Whether you use tobacco or nicotine in any form.
• Whether blood sugar has caused a hospital admission or an emergency room visit recently.
• Whether any medication has been started, stopped or increased in the last few months, and whether any test, scan, procedure or specialist referral has been advised but not yet completed. That last one is on almost every application and catches more people than the diabetes questions do.

Some companies ask outright for the most recent A1C reading. Many do not ask at all. Where it is asked, a reading that has stayed in a settled range for a long time reads very differently from one that has swung, and readings in the region of nine or above tend to draw questions about hospital visits and medication changes.

The look back periods that matter

Almost every question on a burial insurance application has a time window attached to it, and the window is where most of the outcome sits. The same person can be a level benefit case and a graded case depending on which side of a date the application is submitted.

Insulin, and the age it started

The question that surprises people most is about the age insulin began rather than the age diabetes began, and the two are often many years apart. Companies use the age insulin started as a rough marker for which kind of diabetes is present and for how many total years the body has been managing it. Insulin begun in the twenties reads quite differently from insulin begun in the sixties, even where the current dose is identical.

What makes an application better or worse

Better. Several settled years since diagnosis. No hospital visits connected to blood sugar. Medication that has not changed recently. No tobacco. Blood pressure and cholesterol treated and stable. A height and weight inside the company build chart. No cardiac or kidney history sitting alongside the diabetes.

Worse. Current tobacco use, which on its own moves the rate class and, stacked on diabetes, moves several companies to decline. A recent admission. More than one complication. An amputation. Diabetes paired with heart disease or with a stroke. Anything advised by a doctor and not yet carried out, because an open question is treated as an unknown risk rather than as good news.

How much cover to buy

Buy to the bill, not to a round number. A burial once the cemetery has billed commonly totals about $15,395. The funeral home half of that, a service with viewing and a metal casket included, runs about $8,300. A cremation with a service is nearer $6,280, and a direct cremation nearer $2,202. Run your own state through the calculator, then buy a policy that matches the answer.