Insurance Industry Execs ‘Alarmed’ by Surge in Deaths Among Young People — But Stop Short of Blaming COVID Shots

According to InsuranceNewsNet, insurers are especially concerned by data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that show “mortality rates alarmingly rising for different categories,” including younger adult mortality rates that are up more than 20% above historic norms in 2023.

Executives at the largest insurance companies in the United States are alarmed that teenagers, young and white-collar Americans in the prime of life are inexplicably dying at a record pace, causing a “monumental outflow” of death claims and drag on profits that is shaking the industry and causing some to take a fresh look at the problem.

According to an Oct. 26 report in InsuranceNewsNet, U.S. insurance companies expected higher-than-normal payouts from excess deaths during the COVID-19pandemic.

Insurers saw death benefits rise 15.4% in 2020, the biggest one-year increase since the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, followed by a record $100.28 billion — nearly double the historic norm — in total death benefits paid out by the industry in 2021.

“The numbers were naturally forecasted to climb during the pandemic, but some industry and health authorities are concerned the rates haven’t greatly diminished as COVID infection rates have declined,” InsuranceNewsNet reported.

According to InsuranceNewsNet, insurers are especially concerned by data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that show “mortality rates alarmingly rising for different categories,” including younger adult mortality rates that are up more than 20% above historic norms in 2023.

Kory cited five takeaways that challenge that assumption from the mortality report on excess U.S. deaths by the SOA Research Institute:

1. Among working people 35-44 years old, “a stunning 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022, with above-average rates in other working-age groups, too,” Kory said, quoting data from the SOA Research Institute report. “COVID-19 claims do not fully explain the increase,” the SOA report noted.
2. From 2020 through 2022, there were more excess deaths proportionally among white-collar than blue-collar workers: 19% versus 14% above normal. The disparity nearly doubled in the fourth quarter of 2022, U.S. actuaries reported.
3. The executive of a large Indiana life insurance company was clearly troubled by what he said was a 40% increase in the third quarter of 2021 in those ages 18-64. “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business — not just at OneAmerica,” CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference in January 2022. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”
4. Excess deaths are a global phenomenon. The U.K. also saw “more excess deaths in the second half of 2022 than in the second half of any year since 2010,” according to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. In the first quarter of 2023, deaths among people 20-44 years old were akin to “the same period in 2021, the worst pandemic year for that age group, U.K. actuaries reported. In Australia, 12% more people died than expected in 2022, according to that nation’s Actuaries Institute. A third of the excess was non-COVID deaths, a figure the institute called “extraordinarily high.”
5. Death rates are lower than in 2020 and 2021, but they are far from normal. In the year ending April 30, 2023 — 14 months after the last of several pandemic waves in the U.S. — at least 104,000 more Americans died than expected, according to Our World in Data. In that period, 52,427 excess deaths were reported in the U.K., 81,028 in Germany, 17,731 in France, 10,418 in the Netherlands, and 2,640 in Ireland.

Kory said the major media silence on the issue and the SOA’s “strong desire to not be drawn into any debates regarding” COVID vaccine lethality,” despite evidence unearthed by the society’s research, is why he and Pfeiffer wrote the USA Today op-ed in the first place.

“Unsurprisingly,” Kory said, “the SOA does not attempt to interpret or even specifically mention the timing, suddenness, and magnitude of the rises in death claims of young, white-collar workers.”

“I would agree that it is not their job to do this, so the rest of us will,” he said. The way forward is “simply to ask if there were any other events preceding and during those massive spikes that could explain the rises. I can find no other rational explanation than the roll-out of vaccine mandates as the cause.”