Is a medical exam required to get critical illness insurance?

Medical exams are often used as an underwriting tool – not just for critical illness insurance, but also for other insurance products such as life insurance and disability insurance. It gives the insurer an indicator of what kind of risk you present.

After all, your health status will indicate whether you may claim against your policy any time soon. Insurance companies are loath to provide insurance coverage to those who have a high medical risk – for obvious reasons.

Medical Exams

There are some insurance companies selling critical illness insurance that will require you to get a medical exam before they will issue the policy to you. Depending on the company, it may either require you to have a conversation with their accredited doctor (especially if the policy is issued over the Internet), or to submit to urine and blood tests.

This may depend on the declaration you made on your application. For instance, if you declared that you already have diabetes, the insurance company may require you to test for blood sugar and other related tests. This is to check whether your condition is still manageable and that with medications, you may still ward off the possibility of your condition being worse in the near future.

No-Medical Policies

If you’re worried about the medical exams (or scared of needles and blood tests), you don’t need to fret. You can still buy a critical illness insurance policy since there are some companies that issue the policy even without a medical exam. You will still need to answer a few medical questions, though.

One drawback with this policy is that the coverage is limited – some companies will only issue this up to $250,000 (some even less). Anything above that amount will need a medical exam.

The Importance of Full Disclosure

What is important, particularly if you’re getting a no-medical policy, is that you answer the medical questions completely. This is to avoid any problems when it is time to make a claim.

The insurance company may take issue on areas you failed to disclose. For instance, if you failed to inform the insurance company about a heart problem and you make a claim because you need a heart bypass, the insurance company may deny your claim.

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