Why Did I Stop Receiving My Long-Term Disability Benefits?

Описание: Marc Whitehead
Visit www.disabilitydenials.com
Call 281-914-4940

Did you know Insurance Companies have Strategies to Terminate Your Benefits?

I want to share with you some of the most common approaches used by insurance companies to terminate LTD benefits based on disability re-evaluations.
First, The Insurer Says You No Longer Meet Your Policy’s Definition of “Disability.”
Most group LTD plans, and some private disability policies, have a definition of disability that shifts after two years.
Here’s how it works:
You initially qualify for benefits if you can prove to the insurer that you are disabled from performing your regular job or “own occupation”. After 24 months, the definition of disability shifts, to where you must prove you are unable to work in any occupation for which you are reasonably qualified. This is a much harder definition to meet.
If your policy contains such a time-based change, I can guarantee the insurance company will initiate a disability evaluation in the months before the 2-year transition. Unless your initial claim was prepared to account for this change in definition, and you have been proactively meeting these criteria currently, it’s unlikely that you will satisfy these new parameters and will most likely face termination.
Another common strategy to terminate benefits is when the insurance company decides to “ramp up” its cancellation efforts:
Often an insurer will target weak claims, high-payout claims, or other claims they feel that—with some more “evidence”—they will be able to say you are no longer disabled and can go back into the workforce.
To get this evidence, the insurance company may require that you submit to their in-house Functional Capacity Evaluation or Independent Medical Exam for re-evaluation. Your insurer may increase their efforts to terminate your claim by using field interviews, video surveillance, social media surveillance, and background checks.
Another claim termination tactic is to limit benefit payments to 24 months for mental or subjective (or “self-reported”) impairments.
Disability policies often have provisions that limit psychiatric conditions (such as depression, PTSD, and bipolar disorder), and subjective conditions (such as chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia)—to only 24 months of benefit payments.
These claims must always be handled with care from the start. Many conditions, like Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, or ischemia, can manifest early as cognition or behavioral problems or be viewed as subjective. These diseases may not be conclusively diagnosed until later as the disease progresses. Meanwhile, insurers classify the claim as mental or subjective, to get them off the books.
Insurers will re-evaluate and investigate disability throughout the life of your long-term disability claim. Our law firm can manage every aspect of these investigative tactics so that you have the best chance of receiving your benefits for as long as you need them.