When attempting to quote life insurance as accurately as possible, it's important for an agent to gather some key information from potential customers.  Many term life insurance policies these days are sold over the phone. Without the benefit of an in-person visit, it can be a challege discussing medications... especially with older folks.  Take this story as an example.  An older woman (in her 60's) from Virginia called looking for coverage for herself. She had never purchased term life insurance before but was a good sport about the process and answered most of the questions without incident.

How tall are you?
"Right 'round, 5'4" I reckon."

How much do you weigh?  
"Purt near a hunderd and fifty I spose."

Do you have any adverse family history?  
"What you mean by that?"  
Did your parents or sisters or brothers die of heart disease or cancer before they were 60 years old?  
"No."

Do you take any prescription medications?
"You mean like medicines from my doctor?"
Yes.
"Oh yes... I take some tablets my doctor give me."

Now this is where it got tricky.  Medications with names like "hydrochlorothiazide" aren't so easy to sort out by just viewing the vial.  And this particular person was having more trouble than most.  She took several medications for diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, elevated triglycerides etc.  When pressed for the names of the medications she hedged.

"I cain't say fer sure what they called, but I can spell 'em fer ya."  
Okay, shoot.  
"Okay, let's see.  The first one says, "T-A-K-E O-N-E T-A-B-L-E-T..."

Obviously, this was going to be a long phone call.  Some gentle prodding by the agent to help discern the actual name of the medication from the instructions went nowhere and he had to sit and listen to the letter by letter dictation of entire pharmacy labels.  With the patience of a saint, he gathered what he needed in order to help this person only to find out that the cost of coverage was well out of range given her health conditions.  You can help some people sometimes... but you can't help all the people all the time...