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March 24, 2023 at 10:52 AM
What You Need to Know
- Unexpected deaths have been elevated since the pandemic and are still rising.
- These deaths will result in a cascade of costs for insurers.
- Insurers should push for the development and use of preventive screening.
Insurance is about managing risk. Risk to our businesses, homes, valued possessions, health — and perhaps the greatest of all, risk to our lives. Our industry manages these risks in part by analyzing data — and the data from the years since COVID-19 emerged is very concerning.
When I was in high school, I went on a class trip to Washington, D.C., that included a visit to the Vietnam War Memorial. The memorial was still relatively new and controversial.
Being a teenager, the war seemed like ancient history, but it made an impression that I can recall to this day. It marked a pivotal point that not only honored sacrifice but opened the channels for an honest conversation regarding veterans’ health.
We can’t wait for a memorial to be built before we address the problem that is staring us in the face.
The Insurance Collaboration to Save Lives is a nonprofit that has analyzed the existing life insurance claims data since the beginning of the pandemic. Excess mortality in all age groups was up in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, as expected.
What is particularly alarming, however, is how the excess mortality continued to increase, shifting to younger ages, in some cases as high as 200%. While not as high as it was in the latter half of 2021, it still is elevated and has not fallen back to pre-pandemic levels. This is supported by data from third-party industries such as funeral services, who have reported elevated demand and record revenues.
My reference to the Vietnam War was not a casual one; from February 2021 to March 2022, the number of excess deaths in the millennial age cohort was over 60,000. These excess deaths in six months exceed the number of American soldiers lost in 10-plus years of the Vietnam War.
How did we just miss 61,000 people who were in the prime of their lives? They were husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, friends, colleagues. In Vietnam, we basically ignored nearly 58,000 deaths over a decade and it is considered a national shame. Do we really want to wait 10 years this time?
Unexpected Deaths
The pandemic alone doesn’t explain all of those deaths, nor the rising rate of disability and health issues. At this point though, how we got here doesn’t matter; the question that matters most now is what are we going to do about it?
