Gindie,
I am new here, but I am a licensed independent life insurance agent hopefully I can shed some light on your situation. I actually just found this forum in searching a different topic on google.
To answer your question, yes, it is definitely possible to get underwritten life insurance with diabetes. It sounds like your condition is well under control as any A1C level under 6.0 is a very good thing from an insurability standpoint. However, the premiums can vary greatly depending on the company and what their underwriting guidelines state. Your best case scenario (and highly likely) would be a standard risk classification, which is normal life expectancy. Some carriers will assign an additional rating, called a table rating, to the standard rate based on the condition itself and how well you are responding to treatment. Table ratings are letters (A-J) or numbers (1-10 usually). Each table is an approximate 25% increase in premiums over the standard risk class rate. As an example, a Table 2 rating would be the standard rate + 50%, and a Table 4 rating would be double the standard rate. Whenever we have someone who is diabetic, we ask a few basic medical questions and shop their case with 10-15 different companies (no personal information involved, just a general profile) to find out which company will make the best offer. That is a much better way to approach the situation than putting in applications with different carriers and hoping for the best.
Diabetic conditions under control will range from standard to Table 4. If you want to state your age, state of residence, the amount of coverage you are looking for, and how many years you want it guaranteed, I can post an approximate premium quote here for you.
Please note that if you have life insurance coverage through your employer and ever leave the company, you will probably be offered a conversion option to keep the policy, but the premiums will likely increase every 5 years and be very, very expensive as you hit ages 60, 65, 70, 75, etc. It would be cheaper to lock in the rates at a younger age with a standard risk class. I always advise clients to purchase their own life insurance policy if possible with premiums and death benefits fully guaranteed unless their employer is offering coverage as a free benefit or at a very low cost to the employee, but that is usually not the case since group life premiums increase every 5 years as well.
Hopefully that is helpful - I will keep tabs on this thread to see if I can answer any other questions.
