Chronic illness, medication and life insurance.....

[Disney1fan2002]

I was wondering the other day, if someone has a chronic illness, that can become life-threatening, and they choose to not take medication, could a life insurance company refuse to pay out?

I'll use myself as an example, but this does NOT mean I am suicidal. I have Auto-immune hepatitis. It is a disease I did not know I had, and would not known of it, if it had not been for my rhuematollgist monitoring my LFT's. I feel fine. Taking my medicine is a pain, because I have to take so many pills daily. For my arthritis, it was simple, if I wanted to MOVE, I took my meds. Know what I mean?

Anyway. last week, I forgot to take my meds 3 days in a row. I started thinking about what if I just stopped? How long would it take for my liver to fail? 10 years? 15 years? 6 months? Then, from there I wondered about whether or not my life insurance would pay out if they knew I chose not to take the meds.

 

[luvwinnie]

Interesting question. I don't THINK that is considered suicide, so my guess is they would pay...but I do not KNOW. Is it any different from someone with cancer refusing chemo? I've never heard of a claim being denied for this reason.

 

[luvwinnie]

I should add I believe they go by what the death certificate says. For example, the certificate would likely say liver failure due to autoimmune hepatitis...not suicide.

 

[Chuck-PA]

I think you would have to check with your life insurance policy.

There are some illnesses that one may have that you can not even get life insurance for because "it looks like you are trying to profit off of it"
My son has one of these. We just wanted to take a policy out to help with funeral expenses for if and when it would happen. It wasn't even a large policy. We were even told if we lied and did not disclose the illness and it showed that was the cause of death we would not be paid.