We plan to post the June 2003 Internet monthly update to our five monthly update websites on Tuesday, May 27th.
The June 2003 disk update will be processed Tuesday, May 27th and Wednesday, May 28th.
Disks will be shipped Wednesday, May 28th. You should have the June Update in your office by Friday, May 30th. Unless you have made arrangements to purchase your diskettes, please return your April disks ONLY AFTER you have successfully installed this May 2003 Update. March disks are your backup in case you should have problems installing the April edition.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Subscribers who are receiving disks can save up to $80 per year by switching to updates by Internet. Please read the last part of this bulletin for full details.
During the last week of April we posted our first release of the Health Analyzer to our U.S. midmonth website.
The option is NOT in May's monthly update, but will again be included in the very first midmonth update which we will post for May. Given the significant work that was involved in adding this new feature, we are concerned about program bugs which may have slipped through undetected and so we wish to limit exposure to those who are able to get midmonth updates. If we find an error, it can quickly be repaired and updated again.
Please Note: Midmonth Internet updates are available to ALL Compulife subscribers regardless of whether you receive monthly updates by disk or by Internet. Therefore, if you want the Health Analyzer option for May, you will need to get the midmonth update by Internet. If you don't know how to do that, and need some help, give us a call at 800-567-8376.
Providing there are no significant unresolved bugs, Health Analyzer will be offered in our general release for June.
When you run the new version of our program you will note that the client entry screen layout has been modified so that Health Analyzer is now the last button on the client entry record (card). If you change any of the client information such as age, sex, etc., then any previous Health Analyzer information is automatically erased.
During our testing we discovered that it was easy to erase the Health Analyzer information if you clicked the Health Analyzer button before entering all the other client information. Given that, we decided to change the layout and make the Health Analyzer button the last thing you do. Incidentally, we think the new layout is an improvement especially when using multiple client cards for multi-life quotations.
It is important to emphasize that if the Health Analyzer button is not clicked on for a new client, the program will function just as it has in the past. There will be NO CHANGE in results! The nice thing about the design of Health Analyzer was that our company and product data files were untouched by the process. Therefore, DOS users will have no change in program function, and our Internet engine customers have no changes to make.
If Health Analyzer has been selected, comparisons will appear as they have before but they will display a new column next to the premium results. NOTE: There is one exception to this which applies to Smoking/Tobacco use. This will be discussed further on.
The new column will display one of three indicators:
2. A Red shaded circle with an X. This is a "NO GO".
3. NOTHING. This indicates that we lack the company information needed to make a decision.
Green for "GO" - Premium and health categories that meet the additional criteria which was entered by you will be flagged green for "GO". Based upon the information that was entered and based upon the information on file for the company's product and health category, the premium (for that health category) will be flagged green indicating the premium should be available for the client.
Red for "NO GO". A red X will indicate that one or more of the client's health criteria were outside the company's tables. You can click on the red X to discover what criteria caused the red X to appear. If you have any questions you can contact the Home Office or General Agent.
If there is no indication (no X or check) this means that we do not have sufficient information about the company health category information. This means we may have NO information or it means we don't have information about the area you examined in the Health Analyzer option. Because it is early, and we do not have the information for most companies, the former will most likely be the case.
As you know there are non-cigarette options which already exist in our software under the non-smoking category.
For example, a number of companies will allow non-cigarette tobacco users to qualify for one or more of their non-smoking or non-tobacco categories, just as long as the insured doesn't smoke cigarettes. A number of companies consider pipes and cigars to be non-smoking.
In another example some companies actually have a specific health class they typically call "tobacco, not cigarettes". If such a class exists Compulife includes it in our "non-smoking" category. This will not change unless you use Health Analyzer.
If you do use Health Analyzer, and select the "Smoking/Tobacco Use" option, and then indicate that the person engages in any of the tobacco options which follow, then your comparison will become a two pass, two part result.
On the first pass the system will go through the non-smoking categories and attempt to find any products which would qualify based upon the tobacco use that you have described in Health Analyzer. ONLY those non-smoking products which fall into the parameters specified for "Smoking/Tobacco Use" in Health Analyzer will be displayed in the first part of the comparison results. If the product has no health analysis information on which to base a tobacco use decision, it will not appear. This top part of the comparison results will be labeled "Non- Smoker".
If all you examined with Health Analyzer was the Smoking/Tobacco Use, then all products appearing in the first section will have green checks. However, if you looked at any of the other factors, then it is possible the client may have been acceptable based upon tobacco use, but may have been rejected for some other reason (height/weight, BP or cholesterol). If the smoking was acceptable, but one of the other factors failed, then the product will appear with a red X next to the premium.
Once the non-smoking pass is completed, a second pass will then be made through the smoking categories. In this second section of the comparison ALL smoking related products will be quoted and the section will be labeled "smoker". A green check mark will appear next to each premium which qualifies based upon the Health Analyzer results. A red X will appear next to each premium whose tobacco use or other health factors are outside the parameters entered. If there is no green check or red X box next to the products, these products are not defined in the Health Analyzer database.
Having said all this, IF YOU DO NOT USE HEALTH ANALYZER, the system will work just as it does now. And that's particularly true for DOS users who will not have any Health Analyzer option.
We continue to be deeply concerned about what constitutes "smoking" in the mind of the general public. We believe that consumers understand "smokers" to be those who smoke cigarettes. Therefore, to label as "smoking" a product that excludes cigarettes but allows pipe, cigars, etc., is a serious concern for Compulife. The likelihood that such a product could be misrepresented as available to a cigarette smoker is high.
Worse, typical nicotine tests are unlikely to pick up on the distinction. If a client says they smoke cigars, you would expect nicotine in the urine. That nicotine will not say cigars or cigarettes, it will simply say nicotine. If the client is a cigarette smoker, and says he only smokes cigars, the test is of little use. By comparison, if the client says they don't smoke anything, but nicotine shows up, the company is going to have a closer look.
In any regard, Compulife brands cigar/pipe premium categories as "non- smoker" and we hope that that will give any consumer viewing such a quote a reason to pause and say, "but I smoke pipe" or "but I smoke cigars". At that point the agent, NOT COMPULIFE, can explain why a product quotation which has been identified as for a "non-smoker" can be available to a "smoker".
In the event Compulife is ever dragged into litigation about this we can truthfully say in the witness box that our quote was labeled "non- smoker". We will be able to say it wasn't us that told the consumer that it was OK to smoke something, it was the agent.
Keeping this in mind, if you double-click on one of the plans in the "non-smoking" category, the single product display window will label the quote with the company name for the category, and "NS" in the short form category. Conversely, if you double-click on one of the products in the smoking category, the product will come up with the company category name and the Compulife short form "SM" will be displayed.
On the other hand, it will work a little differently if you begin to file products to "Pick 12". If you are filing products from the smoking category the header will identify the quote as "smoker". If you file even one non-smoking product to Pick 5, the quote will become a non-smoker quote.
As we have warned in our previous bulletins and earlier in this bulletin, we did do not expect that every company would cooperate in the provision of this health criteria information. In fact the vast majority have not yet provided details regarding their health criteria.
If you are using the new function, and find that your company's premium is appearing without the green check or red-X, then you can assume we do not have the information about your company's categories although we would like to. If you can be of assistance in getting that information to us, we would deeply appreciate it.
Our next effort will be to allow you to file that multi-life quote into Pick 12.
Currently Pick 12 allows the premiums for only one person. When the next step is completed Pick 12 will have the ability to display the total premiums for two people. You will also be able to view and print the individual premiums for each of the two people.
Effectively this will give you a comparison of multiple companies using the multi-life function, where each of the multiple companies has the exact combination of premium categories that you believe each person can qualify for.
These features will appear in next new version of the Windows program. We have no intention of implementing any of these improvements into the DOS program. Once again, while we have no plans to eliminate our DOS software, and will keep it compatible with our database, the DOS program is falling further and further behind the Windows software in capability. That will also hold true for the new Health Analyzer option.
Once the Pick 12 multi-life option is completed, we will go back to the comparison and allow the comparison of up to a total of 5 individuals on a multi-life basis. As we mentioned earlier, some companies allow the discount for husband and wife, but not for business partners. Many that do allow the discount for business partners, will allow the discount for more than 2 partners. The multi-life comparison button for non-spouse will eventually ask how many of the clients to do the comparison for, and give total premiums for that group. And yes, you will be able to file that group of 2, 3, 4 or 5 individuals into the Pick 12. Once this function is completed, multi-life will be wrapped up.
For those who update by Internet, Compulife has gone to great lengths to provide you with redundancy in our websites. Our main website is:
However, we keep another completely separate website, on a completely different server, in a completely different country, at:
Whatever we update to compulife.com, we also update to compulife.us or compulife.cc. If one website goes down, for whatever reason, the other is ready to serve you. That includes both monthly and mid-month updates.
For those doing monthly updates by Internet, we rely on three other websites to supply monthly updates. These are automatically checked and used by our automatic Internet update software.
For those not wanting to return disks there are two ways to eliminate the problem.
1. Switch to obtaining monthly updates by Internet.
Not only will you eliminate the expense and hassle of returning disks, you will save $80 per year in subscription fees.
To switch to Internet monthly updates, go to our webpage www.compulife.com and select the last menu choice "Forms, applications, instruction tutorials, etc." Under the section "License Agreements", the third license is the "Internet Update Endorsement". Print the endorsement. Once you have it, please read it carefully, especially the part where you agree that you have successfully downloaded and processed our "mid-month updates". If you haven't done that before, call us and we'll be happy to take you through the procedure. It's easy.
2. Disk Purchase Program
The other way to avoid returning the disks and the disk box each month is to pre-purchase them for $21 per year ($1.75 per month). Once you do that you can keep them for future reference, throw them away or return them for a credit (once each year) when you are invoiced for the following year. $21 costs you less than mailing back disks each month.