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Comment by baq | Hacker News Reader

A friend died of lung cancer. Went from mild cough to funeral in about 5 weeks. 40 yo. 2 pre-teen kids.

Started to look after my own health a bit more.

This is a very welcome development.

PSA: If you have dependents, or think you might, get some life insurance in place now while you're relatively young. I've had too many friends/colleagues pass away unexpectedly without any (or not remotely enough) life insurance, leaving a spouse and young children behind, inevitably turning to gofundme and similar just to get by.

I actually tried that but the ones I've found had explicit clauses against cancer and other diseases in fine print. Apparently they only help if you get hit by a car and alike.

Probably need to make another pass. (I'm in Europe)

Yeah, the comment may have been more US-oriented (where I'm living). I do know a couple colleagues who can't get any term life insurance because of some pre-existing medical conditions. That's not good for them, obviously, but for most others, it makes sense to get something early. Years ago, at 35, I got an $800k 20 year term for about $55/month. Close to 20 years later, we have more savings/wealth, so my family would not be in hardship or having to go begging if I died tomorrow. A 15 year $500k policy now costs me $80/month. I recently got that, but may let it lapse in a few years if we don't need that any more.

FWIW, my policies don't have any specific denials for certain causes of death (particular disease, etc) but I did have to provide medical records (and I'm not in perfect health).

One way around this is group health insurance through employers. Often they allow you to take the policy with you when you leave the employer.

The underwriting is done with a group, so the standards are lower and less intrusive.

Interesting. The few times I've seen that, it's typically something like $20k-$50k, which seems more intended to get you through a few months, catch up on bills, etc, but not "family is financially secure for years". Perhaps you can get more via employer-sponsored plans, it just never was presented to me in the few corporate jobs I've had over the years (but boy oh boy did they try to sell cancer insurance!)

I guess it depends on the company. Mine offers up to 5x salary.

s/health/life/

Also to hijack this thread: if you or a loved one is/was a long-term smoker, take yourself/pressure them to have routine cancer testing. Right now, while our liquid biopsy has limited availability, for most people that means getting CT scans. Lung cancer is very fast moving and survivability is directly related to how early it is detected. The overwhelming majority of people who are eligible for routine CT scans for lung cancer don't ever get them!

>The overwhelming majority of people who are eligible for routine CT scans for lung cancer don't ever get them!

Surely there are tradeoffs here, because CT scans use ionizing radiation.

Have CT scans gotten much more efficient (regarding radiation dose) in recent years?

Yes. The one specifically designed for lung cancer screening is a 'low-dose' CT scan, that is usually around 1/5th of a standard CT scan. This is similar to the low-dose CT scan used for identifying heart disease, a coronary calcium scan. In fact, there some research showing that a single scan can do both at the same time (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23235-4), quite well, especially coupled with ML analysis of the scans.

For both of these diseases, it seems like the small amount of radiation (2-3x normal yearly background) is well worth the radiation risk done twice a decade for low risk (>40 y/o) and perhaps up to yearly for high-risk former/current heavy smokers (>50 y/o), which is the current recommendation. Even out-of-pocket, these scans tend to be very inexpensive (for medical diagnostic tests), at around $150-200.

A person with 20 years of smoking history that waits for symptoms before getting tested might as well sign their own death certificate. CT scans aren't something that a person with a low risk profile would have routinely for a wide variety of reasons, which is why bringing an affordable liquid biopsy to market is so important. A lot of work has been done to make CT scans theoretically valuable to a wider audience, but that is not going to translate to widespread early cancer detection in-practice as evidenced by the >90% of eligible patients that never get tested.

> get some life insurance

Be super careful though, as many insurance companies (not only life insurance) just seem like scams. With you only that finding at the worse possible time, after the event.

The alternative being "try to plan for not having to rely on them", which itself may also not be possible.

Damn it man, here I am reading this at 41 with a mild cough. Thanks for that!

I'm really sorry to hear that - cancer is terrible.

Any more details? No history?

Smoker, was always coughing a bit. His grandfather also died of lung cancer, but he didn’t make the connection until it was too late.

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