A table rating is the carrier's way of charging more for a risk they're still willing to take. Instead of declining you, they issue the policy at standard rates plus a percentage. Table 2 is typically standard plus 50%. Table 4 is standard plus 100%, which means double. Carriers label them with letters or numbers depending on the company, and the label on your data page tells you which one you got.
A flat extra is the other version. That's a fixed dollar amount per $1,000 of coverage per year, usually attached to a specific risk like a recent surgery or an aviation hobby, and it often has an end date built into it. A $5 flat extra per thousand on a $500,000 policy is $2,500 a year, and if it's a five-year temporary flat extra, it falls off on its own in year six whether you call or not. Find out which kind you have before you do anything else.
Ratings are not permanent. They exist because the carrier priced a risk using the information in front of them that day. Give them better information and they'll reprice it. The process is called reconsideration, and you have to ask for it, because nobody at the carrier is monitoring your bloodwork.
Carriers generally want to see a year or two of improved numbers before they'll look, since they're pricing a trend rather than a moment. What gets ratings reduced or removed, in rough order of how often it comes up: blood pressure or cholesterol controlled and stable on a steady dose. Weight down and held down. Time since a cardiac event or a cancer treatment, where the rating often steps down on a published schedule as years pass. And tobacco, where most carriers move you from tobacco rates to non-tobacco after 12 consecutive months, though some want 24 or 36.
Tobacco is the single biggest lever. Smoker rates can run two to three times non-smoker rates for the same coverage, so a 48-year-old paying $4,200 a year at tobacco rates might be looking at $1,600 at non-tobacco. That's $2,600 a year back in your pocket, every year, for as long as the policy runs.
How to ask. Write the carrier's underwriting department, through your agent, requesting reconsideration of the rating on your policy number. Send what supports it: recent labs, a letter from the treating doctor, current medications and doses, the date treatment ended. The carrier may order a new paramedical exam and an updated attending physician statement, which means the records out of your doctor's office. Plan on several weeks. If they approve, the new rate applies going forward and not retroactively, so there's no refund on what you've already paid.
If they say no, ask two follow-up questions. What would need to change, and when can I come back. Underwriters will usually tell you. Then ask your agent to shop it, because ratings are not standardized across the industry and one carrier's table 3 for a given condition is another carrier's standard. The catch with shopping it is that a new policy starts a new contestability period and a fresh set of early policy charges, so on a contract that's already ten years in with cash value built up, reconsideration on the existing policy is usually the better road. Why the first few years of cash value look so slow is the reason starting over costs more than it looks like it does.
Put a reminder on the calendar for twelve months after whatever changed. The carrier isn't going to call you when your labs come back clean.