{"id":394,"date":"2020-05-21T17:39:56","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T17:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/truehealthyfood.com\/?p=394"},"modified":"2025-05-02T22:04:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T22:04:59","slug":"can-life-insurers-cover-all-covid-19-death-claims-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/truehealthyfood.com\/index.php\/2020\/05\/21\/can-life-insurers-cover-all-covid-19-death-claims-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Life Insurers Cover All COVID-19 Death Claims?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" alt=\"Coronavirus\" class=\"wp-image-8707 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.iii.org\/insuranceindustryblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/GettyImages-1202470524-1024x683.jpg\"><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Will life \u00a0insurers be able<br \/>\nto \u00a0pay all the death claims attributable<br \/>\nto COVID-19 that come on top of claims for deaths not directly related to the<br \/>\npandemic? <\/p>\n<p>Triple-I chief economist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iii.org\/about-us\/the-team\/dr-steven-n-weisbart-clu\">Dr. Steven<br \/>\nWeisbart<\/a> says they can.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How many additional death claims will COVID-19 cause? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As of this writing, officially about 90,000 Americans have died<br \/>\nfrom COVID-19. In addition, there have been other deaths that seem excessive<br \/>\nrelative to \u201cnormal\u201d statistics in prior years, suggesting the COVID-19 numbers<br \/>\nare an undercount. It\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/investigates\/special-report\/health-coronavirus-usa-cost\/\">also<br \/>\npossible<\/a> that the \u201clockdown\u201d imposed nearly nationally in late March,<br \/>\nApril, and in part of May, added to the total through suicide, drug overdoses,<br \/>\nuntreated conditions that would have been treated and managed in the absence of<br \/>\nthe pandemic, and violence. <\/p>\n<p>So,<br \/>\nlet\u2019s assume that, for the full year 2020, COVID-19 and related stresses cause<br \/>\n300,000 additional deaths. For simplicity, we\u2019ll ignore any lockdown-related reductions<br \/>\nin deaths \u2013 from, for example, fewer traffic accidents, air pollution, and<br \/>\nother causes \u2013 that might be attributed to the pandemic.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9469 lazyload\" width=\"127\" height=\"189\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.iii.org\/insuranceindustryblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/steven_weisbart-1-683x1024.jpg\"><figcaption>Dr. Steven Weisbart<br \/>\nTriple-I Chief Economist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s<br \/>\nunlikely that all the people who\u2019ve died from COVID-19 had individual life<br \/>\ninsurance, since many were age 60 or over,\u201d Weisbart says. \u201cEven if we assume a<br \/>\nthird of these were insured \u2013 and, further, that two-thirds of younger people<br \/>\nwho died also had life insurance \u2013 and that all these claims were in addition<br \/>\nto other causes of death, that would be 150,000 claims.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, the latest year for which we have data, beneficiaries<br \/>\nunder 2.7 million individual life insurance policies received death benefits.<br \/>\nSo, although 150,000 additional death claims represent a large human toll, they<br \/>\nwould be only a 5.6 percent increase over the 2.7 million baseline. <\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9499 lazyload\" width=\"752\" height=\"402\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.iii.org\/insuranceindustryblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Life-Claims-1024x549.png\"><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThat would result in total death benefits being paid to 2.85<br \/>\nmillion beneficiaries,\u201d Weisbart says. \u201cThis is roughly the same as occurred in<br \/>\n2015 and well below the peak of 3.5 million in 2012.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>In other words, even with our conservative assumptions, paying the<br \/>\nadditional deaths claims due to the pandemic is well within the industry\u2019s financial<br \/>\nand operational ability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Will life \u00a0insurers be able to \u00a0pay all the death claims attributable to COVID-19 that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/truehealthyfood.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/truehealthyfood.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/truehealthyfood.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truehealthyfood.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truehealthyfood.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/truehealthyfood.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":395,"href":"https:\/\/truehealthyfood.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions\/395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/truehealthyfood.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truehealthyfood.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truehealthyfood.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}