- Speak to a licensed sales agent!
- (800) 521-7873
Do Insurance Companies Cover Suboxone?
Do insurance companies cover suboxone? That depends what condition you’re taking suboxone to treat. In most cases, suboxone is used to help treat opioid addiction. When it comes to life insurance, a past opioid addiction will affect your rates and, depending on how long ago you were addicted, your ability to get covered.
If you’re currently taking suboxone, call us and let’s figure out your life insurance options. Call (800) 521-7873 or email us at info@lifequote.com for personalized insurance advice.
Do Insurance Companies Cover Suboxone?
In general, life insurance companies require applicants to be drug-free for a number of years. However, every insurer sets their own underwriting policy, so there’s no single rule that would apply across the entire industry. Some will consider applicants who have been clean for 2 years or 5 years, while others prefer to consider those with 10 years of sobriety. That’s why there’s no single answer to the question, “do insurance companies cover suboxone?”
If you are still in treatment or recent recovery from an opioid addiction, you are probably not going to be able to get coverage at this time. Insurers want to see that you’ve been able to recover and stay substance-free for an extended length of time before they’ll risk insuring you.
However, if you’ve been opioid-free for several years, it may be possible to get covered. Your options and your rates are going to depend on your individual medical history.
That’s why it’s helpful to work with an agent – we know which carriers are more likely to insure people on the lower end of that scale, and what other key factors they’ll look for before making an offer of coverage.
If you’re currently taking suboxone but have at least several years of sobriety, call us and let’s figure out your life insurance options. Call (800) 521-7873 and let us give you personalized insurance advice.
Suboxone and Life Insurance Underwriting
Suboxone is a prescription drug that helps regulate brain chemistry. It binds to the same receptors that opioids do, reducing the effects of substances such as fentanyl, oxycodone, methadone, or heroin. This means it can lessen the risk of overdosing, and can help people reduce and even end their addition to opioids.
Suboxone is helpful for people in many stages of recovery. It’s not just for people who are in danger of overdosing. It’s a drug that can help make long-term recovery possible, which means your doctor and recovery team may continue prescribing it for people who are no longer in immediate danger of an overdose or a relapse.
The good news? Applying for life insurance while you are taking suboxone is not going to result in an instant decline. It is, however, going to tell the insurer to take a very close look at your medical records, prescription history, and behavioral history to evaluate the level of risk you represent.
With life insurance, it’s not so much a matter of asking “do insurance companies cover suboxone” as it is about understanding the underwriting process. Underwriting is the process life insurers use to evaluate how much of a risk it would be to insure you. To do that, they need facts about your lifestyle and medical history. To learn more about policy rate classifications, click here.
If you are taking suboxone to treat a medical condition that has nothing to do with opioid addiction, the life insurance company is going to want detailed information about that condition. In both cases, the higher the risk your health presents, the more they will charge for coverage.
Here are some of the questions a life insurance underwriter is likely to ask if your medical history includes opioid addiction:
- How long were you addicted to opioids?
- Which opioids did you take? How did you administer them?
- Were you ever hospitalized because of your addiction?
- When did you begin treatment? What did your treatment consist of?
- How long have you been sober?
- Have you had any relapses? If so, how long did they last?
- Are you currently still in treatment? If so, what does that treatment consist of?
- Are you currently employed? If so, for how long?
- Are you currently housed? Do you have supportive relationships in place?
- Did your addiction cause any other medical conditions?
- Are you under a doctor’s care for those medical conditions? Are you taking any prescribed medications to treat them?
- Are you taking any prescribed medications for non-related medical conditions?
Your answers to these questions will help the life insurance underwriter understand where you are in terms of treatment and physical recovery. That, in turn, will help them assess the level of risk they’d be taking on by insuring you.
If you’re currently taking suboxone but have several years of sobriety, call us and let’s figure out your life insurance options. Call (800) 521-7873 for personalized insurance advice.
Additional Considerations for Suboxone & Past Opioid Use
You may be wondering what happens if you don’t want to disclose the answers to the types of questions listed above. It’s in your best interest to do so for multiple reasons:
- Whatever you say is protected by HIPAA. This means that your answers are confidential, and neither your life insurance agent nor the insurance carrier can share that information with anyone else unless you give your permission. They cannot share that information with your employer, for example.
- Most life insurance policies require a medical exam. To get the most affordable rates, insurance companies require applicants to take a free medical exam. An examiner comes to your home or office and measures your height and weight, and collects blood and urine samples. The insurer pays for lab analysis of these samples to get a better picture of your health. If you do not disclose that you are currently prescribed suboxone as part of your ongoing treatment and recovery plan, the insurer will find out anyway through the lab analysis. At that point, they will be unlikely to offer you coverage since you did not disclose an accurate medical history.
- Policies that do not require an exam will check nationwide prescription databases. There are plenty of non-med policies that do not require an exam. However, the insurer still needs to get a clearer picture of your current health to evaluate the level of risk they’d take in insuring you. To do this without the exam, they will look up information about you, including your driving record and your prescription history. This information is available in national databases the insurer can pay to access. So even if you don’t disclose your suboxone prescription or the reason for it, chances are they’ll find the records of that prescription. If they determine you weren’t honest in your responses to their medical questionnaire, they will not offer you coverage.
If you’re currently taking suboxone and have at least several years of sobriety, call us and let’s figure out your life insurance options. Call (800) 521-7873 for personalized insurance advice.
Let’s Figure Out Your Life Insurance Options
There are several different coverage types, as we mentioned above. Depending on your history and situation, you may be able to qualify for one or more types. Click here to learn more about policies for people with high-risk jobs or health conditions.
- Term life insurance. This is the most affordable type of coverage, and requires a medical exam. You choose the policy term (length of coverage) and face value (amount of coverage).
- Non-med coverage. There are term policies that don’t require a medical exam, but they usually cost more than fully underwritten policies that require the exam. You’ll still have to answer a medical questionnaire, and the insurer will do background research on you to get a fuller sense of the amount of risk they’d take on in insuring you.
- Guaranteed issue. This policy type offers limited coverage, less than $50,000. It’s designed for people who don’t qualify for other types of coverage, usually due to health issues. It requires a brief medical questionnaire, but as long as you are not in a nursing home or diagnosed with a terminal illness, you are likely to qualify. The catch? It costs more, and if you pass away within the first few years of the policy, your beneficiary(ies) will probably only get a portion of the full death benefit.
Because life insurance is priced based on your individual history and circumstances, we can only give generalizations here. So, to give you a definite answer to the question, “do insurance companies cover suboxone?”, we would need to ask you about the reasons for your suboxone use.
If you’re currently taking suboxone and have at least several years of sobriety, call us at (800) 521-7873 and let’s figure out your life insurance options.
