Trust You For Life? Oh yeah.

When I first started work years and years ago, when dinosaurs were still on earth, there was a steady stream of insurance people phoning me for appointments. Those days, they were called ‘insurance salesmen’ and they carried a black briefcase commonly referred to as a ‘James Bond bag.’ It’s odd, but apparently nobody else carried those James Bond bags (not even car salesmen) so people who carried those bags were simply referred to as ‘insurance agents’ in jest.

Anyway, those insurance people were eager to sell me a Life Insurance policy. Those days, the most well known insurance company was AIA, and we didn’t hear so much about Great Eastern then. ING, AXA, Asia Life and such like were unheard of. Even then, those insurance people wanted to sell me a policy just for life insurance and they did not talk about things like hospitalization. Perhaps then, all hospitals were government hospitals and we didn’t have any of those expensive private hospitals like we have today, so there was no point in offering a policy for hospital and surgery. Logical.

Anyway, I eventually bought a life insurance policy from one of those agents who was successful in convincing me that I needed one, although, thinking back, I am really not sure now whether I had bought it because I really needed one or whether it felt good to be ‘covered by AIA.’ I was then in my early twenties, had no illness whatsoever, was strong as an ox, and unless I got knocked down by a bus, did not really think I needed a life insurance policy.

Then years and years later, after the last dinosaur had been buried in ice or roasted with the erupting volcano, Malaysia discovered privatization and Malaysians discovered it cost the earth to be admitted to private hospitals like the Subang Jaya Medical Centre or Pantai Medical Centre. We were aghast to learn that it cost a few thousand ringgit just to be admitted for a night or two in one of these private hospitals where two or three specialists casually dropped in to poke a stethoscope at you, where you actually choose your meals from their daily menu, and where the reception area could very well be mistaken for that of a 5-star hotel. Jokes were circulated of how one would be welcomed by a row of bank ATMs at one corner of the reception area of these hospitals, clearly for those naïve and ignorant patients who did not know that one needed to place a hefty deposit before one could be registered for admission.

Thus, a new set of insurance people (by now, they were no longer known as insurance agents but ‘consultants’) phoned me for appointments, offering a new kind of policy called hospitalization and surgery (or H&S). Horror stories were told and retold of how so-and-so lost his entire life savings as a result of just one major operation in one of these private hospitals, or how somebody who could not afford to be admitted to a private hospital died while waiting for his turn at a general hospital. “We know you need such a cover, and that’s why our Company is offering this,” was what the insurance consultant said to me and I, turning purple with fright, quickly signed on the dotted line and handed him a cheque. (To be sure, insurance consultants all over the country were laughing all the way to the bank selling H&S policies, and their respective up-lines were queueing up to book their new Mercedes.) By then, I was no longer in my early twenties, was not so energetic, had decided that I need not climb Mt Kinabalu to prove anything to anyone, and generally felt that I might just need that kind of insurance cover.

With that, I was comforted to know that in the worst scenario, I could have a heart by-pass in one of the best hospitals in town, and yet not be any poorer for it. Thank you, God, for nice and understanding insurance companies who know my needs.

But now, as the sunset is nearer than the sunrise, the rules have changed. My insurer has told me that their policy with me will soon expire and will not be renewed because I am no longer worth insuring (they didn’t exactly use those words but I wasn’t born yesterday). The ‘nice and understanding company that knows my needs’ knows that my needs in the foreseeable future are likely to cause them huge payouts, and so is pulling the plug on me. So now, instead of having long lines of insurance consultants phoning to see me like years and years before, I find myself phoning each of them and, alas, being told the same thing: ‘Our policy has an age limit and you have reached that limit.’

This then is the irony of life: when I really didn’t need it, people were so eager to cover me; now when I really need to be covered, nobody wants to cover me.

“We cover you for life.”
"Trust us for life."
Oh yeah.