When insurers determine your rates, they look at anything that could impact life expectancy. Since smoking can considerably cause various types of cancers and lead to earlier death, rates will be higher because insurers take a greater risk. Whether your insurer will accept your policy is up to them, but in most cases, you can get life insurance as a smoker.
What Counts As Tobacco Use?
Smoking isn’t limited to cigarettes. Other nicotine consumption methods that count as smoking for life insurance include:
- Vapes/e-cigarettes
- Snuff
- Chewing tobacco
- Pipes
- Hookahs
- Nicotine creams, lozenges, and patches
- Marijuana (some insurers label marijuana users as smokers if they consume frequently)
- Cigars (many policies allow you to claim non-smoker status if use is limited to one cigar per month)
How Do Companies Determine If Someone Is A Smoker?
Insurers verify non-smoking status if a person claims to be a non-smoker on an application using a number of methods:
- Lab tests to detect cotinine (a nicotine byproduct) in blood and urine
- Medical exams
- Prescription drug history
- The sound of a person’s voice during a phone interview
- Social media posts
- Data from the MIB, which has a record of all insurance applications an individual has filed, including those for health insurance
If you’re a smoker and lie about your tobacco use on your application, you can lose your policy and be denied from obtaining other life insurance policies in the future.
Suppose you’d rather not disclose your smoking status. In that case, you can opt for a guaranteed issue policy, which assigns policies with no questions asked. The downside is that your coverage will likely be $25,000 at most.
What If My Smoking Habits Change After Getting Life Insurance?
If you stop smoking for 12 months, you may undergo another medical exam for re-rating. If it’s proven that you’ve quit smoking for the past year, you can be insured as a non-smoker and enjoy lower rates. However, if you’ve developed a new medical condition in the time you’ve quit smoking, your rates may not change.
If you start smoking after securing your policy, your rates won’t increase at all. Insurers know the odds of this happening are low, as 90% of smokers start earlier in life than later.
How Does Tobacco Use Impact Rates?
Smokers can pay more than triple the rates than non-smokers do. The impact on rates becomes amplified when applicants have other risks for lower life expectancy, such as being older.
For example, non-smoking men at 30 may pay a $303 monthly rate for a term life policy and $397 at 40. Male smokers at 30 can expect to pay $828 per month, and at 40, the monthly rates climb to $1,531.
We Have Policies For Everyone
Whether you’re a smoker or not, Hometown Financial Group will find you the best life insurance policy. Call us today at (919) 887-1236 to learn more about your life insurance options.