For those of you who applied for life insurance after getting your MS diagnosis, did it affect your rating?
I remember reading in the past it affects life expectancy on average by about 2 years, and what I read this morning at NMSS.org said we have on average 95% normal life expectancy because of "a few" patients with more severe disease dying of complications from things like pneumonia. To me that doesn't seem like it would be quite enough to bump you down a rating, but I just got a letter from our life ins company that said I was rated at a higher risk category b/c of my history of MS. That was disappointing because (a) the same co rejected my DH for life ins even though initially they had said--with full knowledge of his own medical issues--that he should qualify for the second-highest rating and (b) we got their rejection letter for him a month ago so I didn't even realize mine was still in the underwriting process.
Anyhow, forgive the vent at the end. Just curious if it's common for life insurance companies to consider us higher risk even though it seems like it's rare for MS to actually shorten someone's life. (I was told I had "probable MS" back in 2001 and "definite MS" when I had another attack in 2007, no attacks since then, "light lesion load" so I know overall mine is a mild case, I've worked hard to lose weight and eat healthy and exercise and am overall in good health other than the silly lesions. )
I remember reading in the past it affects life expectancy on average by about 2 years, and what I read this morning at NMSS.org said we have on average 95% normal life expectancy because of "a few" patients with more severe disease dying of complications from things like pneumonia. To me that doesn't seem like it would be quite enough to bump you down a rating, but I just got a letter from our life ins company that said I was rated at a higher risk category b/c of my history of MS. That was disappointing because (a) the same co rejected my DH for life ins even though initially they had said--with full knowledge of his own medical issues--that he should qualify for the second-highest rating and (b) we got their rejection letter for him a month ago so I didn't even realize mine was still in the underwriting process.
Anyhow, forgive the vent at the end. Just curious if it's common for life insurance companies to consider us higher risk even though it seems like it's rare for MS to actually shorten someone's life. (I was told I had "probable MS" back in 2001 and "definite MS" when I had another attack in 2007, no attacks since then, "light lesion load" so I know overall mine is a mild case, I've worked hard to lose weight and eat healthy and exercise and am overall in good health other than the silly lesions. )
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