Employer-sponsored group life insurance: how much does portability help me?
I'm pretty young, I plan for things as though I will not die in the next 20 years. Nobody really depends on me (I'm more of a "nice to have"). So I only value life insurance for its ability to lock in guaranteed coverage or lower rates in the future.
My employer offers group life insurance from MetLife, and I pay for a pretty high coverage amount based on the idea that I could leave at any time and then benefit from portability. I think this is a summary of what portability means. The premiums are tiny, but I realize that I've never thought clearly about the value of the benefits.
As I understand it, portability protects me (among other things) from coverage denial if I develop or discover a serious medical issue after leaving my job. Does it also protect me against massive premium increases if I develop or discover a serious medical issue after leaving my job? How much protection?
That is how I interpret the"following statement from the above MetLife file, but I have no expertise in this area (emphasis mine):
Rates are based on your current age and differ from the rates you paid while employed. As with any group of insureds, rates may change based on the financial experience of the group.
I interpret that as "rates are based only on your current age, your group experience, and maybe some very basic other stuff like sex and tobacco use, and won't go up if you get cancer," but that could be too optimistic.
I interpret "the group" as being a pretty big group based on people with my same employer plan or similar plans, but that could also be too optimistic. Maybe "the group" is "everybody with the same terminal illness as you," which could be a pretty expensive group.
Finally, maybe I'm reading the wrong document. Maybe it's outdated, maybe it's talking about a different kind of portability, or maybe the fine print varies so much between states or between different plans that it's useless. Let me know!
submitted by /u/Head-Mastodon
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