Co-Founder, Coastal Financial Partners Group, California
If you are applying for a medically underwritten individual life insurance policy, you should expect to have a blood profile and urinalysis ordered as well as vital signs taken by a paramedical examiner. The lab tests look at body chemistry and will include screening for drugs. A life insurance underwriter is looking for abnormal results which, on their own may not mean much but when compared with additional information collected such as medical history, readings for blood pressure, etc., it helps them assess mortality risk.
Agent Owner, Gilmore Insurance Services, Marysville, Washington State
Yes, all companies when using paramedical exams do some drug testing as part of the chemical analysis in the underwriting process. Some drugs will effect certain levels of function within say kidney function that will show up by pushing the level higher. Alcohol for example, a legal form of a "drug" if consumed too close to an exam will raise blood sugars, alter the kidney function numbers and a few other numbers like those involving the liver. That is why it is never a good idea to consume significant amounts of alcohol the night before a blood/urine test. It will skew the results.
Then it is up to the individual to get a second test, at their expense to show the first test was off.
These are the two most common substance tests that almost all insurers test for when they perform medical underwriting.
Besides these two substances, most carriers (Guardian included), do not test for other substances, i.e. drugs.
If there are other drugs that you currently use and you do not disclose, you do run the risk of creating a contested life insurance policy if you should die within the contestability period.
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Then it is up to the individual to get a second test, at their expense to show the first test was off.
These are the two most common substance tests that almost all insurers test for when they perform medical underwriting.
Besides these two substances, most carriers (Guardian included), do not test for other substances, i.e. drugs.
If there are other drugs that you currently use and you do not disclose, you do run the risk of creating a contested life insurance policy if you should die within the contestability period.