As part of the application process, the insurance company will request that you fill out a health statement for each member of the family that you intend to insure. Based on that information the company will make one of the following decisions:
- Accept all or certain family members
- Accept certain family members with limitations
- Increase the price by changing the rate from “preferred” to “ standard”
- Exclude certain preexisting conditions or
- Decline the application
Depending on the insurer, 70-80 percent of applications are accepted without being uprated or having exclusions.
In the five states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine) that do not allow medical underwriting, individual insurance prices are substantially higher than group policies and many insurers avoid the market.