Nicotine can be a drag on life insurance rates, no matter how you use it
No matter whether you smoke it, chew it, get it from a patch or take a drag from an electronic device or hookah pipe, tobacco use can be costly to your health and your pocketbook.
The toll smoking and other tobacco use can take on a person’s health is great. Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S., causing about 443,000 deaths each year from 2000 to 2004, lung cancer alone accounts for 157,000 of those deaths, according to The American Cancer Society’s 2010 Cancer Facts and Figures. Thirty percent of all cancer deaths and 87 percent of lung cancer deaths are attributable to tobacco use. It is also a leading cause of cardiovascular and respiratory disease.
If you think electronic cigarettes are safer — think again. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says electronic cigarettes also have cartridges filled with nicotine, flavors and other chemicals that are known to be toxic to humans. A recent FDA report pointed to diethylene glycol, nitrosamines, anabasine, myosmine and B-nicotyrine as sources of toxic chemicals found in e-cigarettes.
One chemical in particular, diethylene glycol, is an ingredient of antifreeze and a lubricant used in automobile brake fluid. In comparison, one cartridge of electronic cigarettes is estimated to have 18 mg of nicotine, while a pack of tobacco cigarettes has 20 mg, but the verdict is still out whether there are smoking cessation benefits to be found by switching to an electronic cigarette. Even hookah smoking, which is gaining popularity with the younger generation, may provide less of a nicotine count overall, but has a high concentration of carbon monoxide.
Whenever smokers light up, they are exposing themselves to more than 4,000 chemicals that make up the tar contained in a cigarette, according to the ACS. More than 60 of those chemicals are known to cause cancer. Some of the more lethal chemicals include cyanide, benzene, formaldehyde, methanol, acetylene (fuel used in welding torches) and ammonia.
Insurance companies and underwriters determine rates for smokers and other tobacco users by following the latest studies and mortality statistics provided from health organizations. For this reason, smokers pay more for life insurance premiums. How high those premiums can get depends on what you smoke, how often you smoke and whether you are otherwise healthy. Rick Bergstrom, of Bergstrom Consulting in Seattle, says smoking especially affects term policy rates.
“When it comes to term policies, a preferred smoker (free of health conditions) would normally be rated almost double that of a preferred nonsmoker,” says Bob Bennethum, principal of The Producer’s Advantage Inc., an insurance broker based in Bingham Farms, Mich.
When it comes to whole life insurance, a smoker may be rated even more.
For instance, he says, a 45-year-old preferred nonsmoker with a 0,000 universal life policy with a lifetime guarantee would pay about ,550 a year for the policy. “The same policy would cost about ,400 for a preferred smoker,” he says.
If a smoker also has an illness aggravated by smoking, such as emphysema or coronary artery disease, they would be rated higher for smoking, higher again for the illness and higher again for the combination of the two, says Bill Tilford, principal of Tilford Consulting in Chicago.
Some insurance companies will give a break to the occasional cigar or pipe smoker, but only if they smoke about once a month or less, offering standard nonsmoker rates, and a handful of companies that target rural areas will provide those same rates to those who chew tobacco, Tilford says.
But for the most part, regular smokers and other nicotine users will be rated either preferred smoker or standard smoker, no matter how they get their nicotine fix. The smokers’ age and length of time smoking could also make a difference between the two rates, underwriters say.
“Chewing tobacco is not as noxious as cigarette smoking, but you still are putting dangerous chemicals in your system. There are very few companies to my knowledge that will allow nonsmoker rates,” says Bennethum.
He says those who use a hookah pipe are smokers, as are those who wear a nicotine patch or chew nicotine gum.
“You may not using the patch or gum socially or recreationally, but even if you are trying get yourself off the nicotine habit it counts as tobacco use,” Tilford says.
Even so, if you are involved in a smoking cessation program it may be a good idea to let you life insurance agent know. Especially if you would like to convert your term life policy into a whole life policy. Depending on how long you have been successful in the program, this could result in lower rates.
Marijuana users would most likely get a smoker’s rate, and depending on use, be rated for drug use as well, says Anna Hart, principal of ARH Consulting in Eastland, Tex. As for those smoking electronic cigarettes, they may not emit second-hand smoke, but they do contain nicotine, which also makes the person a smoker in an underwriter’s eyes.
Hart says most insurance companies check a person’s urine to test for a metabolite of nicotine called cotinine in their system. Depending on how much an individual smokes, the cotinine can be present for up to 20 days. If someone abstains for several weeks to “beat” the test, they would be considered misrepresenting their history and the policy could be rescinded.
There are ways smokers can get reduced premiums. Bennethum says no medical test is needed for policies with death benefits of less than 0,000, although Bergstrom points out the premiums for these policies usually are higher.
The other way is to simply quit smoking. Hart says once an individual quits smoking a standard or even a preferred policy could be obtained within one, three or five years, depending on the insurance company.
Other hidden costs associated with tobacco use
Tobacco has become taboo in the work place, with almost 6,000 companies in the U.S. attempting to regulate off-duty smoking in the workplace, including termination, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
There is little legal recourse or sympathy for employees who want to smoke at the workplace, legal and labor experts say. However, whether employers can forbid you from smoking outside the workplace as well depends largely on what state you live in, they say.
“There are only three protected classes—race, age and sex, and in some instances the disabled. But smokers are not among them,” says Brian Snyder, a Chicago attorney. “They have no special rights.”
Lewis Maltby, president of the New Jersey-based National Workrights Institute, which advocates for workers’ rights, has no problem with employers outlawing workers from smoking while on the job. “It’s what they ought to do,” he says. He points out that every state but Montana is an at-will state, meaning employers can fire someone for any reason other than deemed age, sex or race discrimination.
“They can fire you for parting your hair wrong or the way you park your car,” Maltby says.
What Maltby, the ACLU, and 29 states do have a problem with is firing someone for smoking on their own personal time. While lawsuits from dismissed employees have ended with the courts ruling in the company’s favor, 29 states, including California, Colorado and New York, passed laws about 10 years ago outlawing companies from firing an employee for smoking outside the work place. Maltby says it is doubtful the other 21 states will follow suit at this point, as there hasn’t been a new state law passed on this topic in years.
“What’s legal and what’s right are not always the same,” Maltby says.
He says employers’ who say that eliminating smokers from the payroll saves the company money on health insurance would not hold up in court.
“When you look at the overall picture, the average smoking employee does not cost the company that much more money,” he says.
Besides, he adds, interfering in someone’s private life is a dangerous road to go down. “Everything we do in our private life could affect our medical costs, including sex,” he says. “There’s nothing in the law that says employers can’t interfere there, too.”
This article was originally published at Life Quotes, Inc.
Life Quotes provides access to comparative quotes for auto, life, health and business insurance quotes so that busy consumers and business owners can save time and money. Life Quotes is dedicated to providing impartial insurance information.
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