Death-benefit claims are jumping, but we can’t say why

Life insurance providers are seeing an abnormally large uptick in non-COVID-19 death-benefit claims, as recently reported by the Wall Street Journal, and they can’t figure out why. 

Insurers are scratching their heads to determine the cause of this unfortunate trend, but so far they can only speculate. 

Some companies think that while these fatalities may not be from COVID-19 directly, they may still be results of pandemic-related policies, like lockdowns.  

“The losses we are seeing continue to be elevated over 2019 levels due at least in part, we believe, to the pandemic and the existence of either delayed or unavailable healthcare,” said Globe Life finance chief Frank Svoboda. 

Indeed, it is true that lockdowns played a very detrimental role in society. According to a study by Johns Hopkins University published in January, “While … lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted.” Another study recently published found that those who were isolated and did not have COVID-19 suffered from elevated levels of inflammatory markers in their brains, leading to emotional, mental and physical fatigue. 

Still, this hardly explains the 40% increase in deaths from pre-pandemic levels among the 18-64 age group, the healthiest portion of our population. 

“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business,” said OneAmerica chief executive Scott Davison in December. 

Davison said that not only are deaths at an all-time high, but a 40% increase is way beyond what would be considered a "catastrophe”. 

“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be a 10 percent increase over pre-pandemic. So 40 percent is just unheard of,” Davison said. 

Svoboda of Global Life said that many of the death-benefit claims are from heart and circulatory issues and neurological disorders. 

Heart and circulatory issues are hallmarks of the COVID-19 vaccine, though the mere suggestion of that is somewhat verboten and could trigger an intense backlash. 

“We deserve answers, and some would conjecture, ‘hey, does this have something to do with the fact that we might have done a mass inoculation strategy?'” asked Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on Tucker Carlson Tonight. “There’s no answers.” 

“The fact that the insurance companies are now warning us about it should have every politician of every political party across the country say, ‘regardless of your politics, we gotta figure out what’s going on here,” Kirk added.