So here’s another random topic. Life insurance. Having attempted suicide before and being hospitalized for the same, I have been turned down for insurance before. There’s so much to unpack here so I’ll try to be concise but easy to follow.
I worked in insurance before and as such I realize the importance of insurance as well as their perspective on this matter. If you are the breadwinner of your home or contribute significantly financially to the home, life insurance is important. You desire, in the case of your death, that your family is able to maintain a level of stability and semblance of normalcy. The money provided by insurance will help to cover financial expenses for your loved ones. That is an important factor for consideration. Now the thing about life insurance is that it’s a considerable payout for the company and they do not take that risk lightly. There are many people who wait until they’ve been diagnosed with some terminal illness and then get insurance so that when they kick the bucket 6 months later their family gets a big payout. So the insurance company has policies to prevent people from taking advantage of that. They don’t want to payout on dead cases either. What I mean by that is the higher your risk is of dying, the less likely you are to qualify for insurance. These risks include being a smoker, drug dependent, having a risky job (boater, pilot etc). These all could mean you croak on any given day and the insurance company will have to pay out the big bucks.
The same is true for people who have attempted suicide. First of all, you have folks who intend to commit suicide and and go out and get insurance so as to take care of their families. That’s a blatant abuse of the system (albeit for an understandable reason), so the company has policies regarding death by suicide. But the issue I’m taking up here is the fact that insurance is less accessible to you if you have attempted to take your life. On the part of the company, it’s understandable because you have tried to take your life before and there’s no guarantee that you won’t do it again and they will have to cover that expense. As a company all you are is a risk…a liability…a number…not a human being.
On the side of the person, you most likely were going through a difficult period in your life, probably not coping well with a traumatic situation or event or experience, or just generally having a hard time dealing with life. Most people who fail a suicide attempt go on to live productive lives and deeply regret their attempt. That, however, does not stop the insurance companies from holding that desperate act against you. Any survivor of the attempt will tell you that they think about it from time to time and it weighs on them in an insurmountable way. They have to deal with the guilt of what they put their family through, definitely the medical bill they racked up getting care, the fear and anxiety of being in that place again and a host of other emotions. To top this off, when you apply for life insurance they will either deny you or rate your premium higher or offer you bare minimum coverage with caveats, thus holding that attempt over your head. Applying for life insurance can be extremely triggering, challenging and discouraging.
The company has an end goal and profit is the name of the game. It’s important in the business of insurance not to take on risk. In the same vain, to what extent? You strip a person of their humanity and reduce them to nothing more than the amount of the payout as if their very life meant nothing more than that. And what’s worse is that they will question you to the high heavens about every single detail of your suicide attempt, wanting to know every detail of that experience and then after waking up all of your demons, send you out of that office with no policy and a broken spirit.
Capitalism sucks! That’s just the reality (unless you’re rich of course). So this is what we deal with and we know that the company cannot and will not take on the risk. They don’t know if you will end up as the population who fully turns their life around and is healthy and productive and will never attempt again; or if you’re the population that will continue to attempt until you’re successful. They also don’t know if your aim is to try to cheat the system so as to get a paycheck for your family. So their actions are understandable. Still, it doesn’t matter which population you’re a part of, having this hang over your head is not a good feeling. There has to be some middle ground. There has to be some kind of empathy and humanity towards those who have lived through a suicide attempt while still meeting company goals. I don’t think it’s too much to be asked to be seen as a human being and not as a number on a cheque.
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