Tabulación graficación y análisis de la información

Long-term disability insurance policies will promise to pay between 60% and 66% of your prior earnings.

This is standard procedure. What they forget to inform you is that if your employer paid the premiums, income taxes will be deducted, so the protection becomes much less!

If you are receiving social security benefits, this will reduce the benefits from your employer’s policy even more! There are some policies that provide less than 60% of one’s prior earnings coverage. Employers must start buying policies with more upgrades because after taxes, these policies offer almost no benefits whatsoever!

It’s vital that employees know that policies providing less than 60% of benefits are not standard, and to shop better policies that are available on the market that are similar rates.

“You can work part time, but if you don’t, your

benefits will terminate!”

Your sales agent who is selling you this policy is focused not only on his or her commission, but also on the benefits payable if you meet the definition of disability.

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Your sales agent may not explain the “termination of benefits” clause in your policy. This information will be of the utmost importance to you, as you could very well lose your benefits due to these clauses. It is outrageous that these clauses state that all of your benefits will terminate if you are able to work part-time but don’t.

Let’s be clear on this. The policy doesn’t read that benefits will termi- nate if you can earn 60% of pre-disability earnings. The policy doesn’t read that it will terminate your benefits if you can work 60% of the time you were working in the past. The policy does state, however, that it will terminate benefits if you are able to work part time, but don’t! Almost anyone could work “part-time,” couldn’t they? What do they mean by part-time? An hour a week? There have been cases where the medical records and the doctors of the claimant all agreed that he could not work more than two hours at a time during the week due to serious pain and fatigue. It’s not surprising that some insurance companies insist that “the ability to work up to two hours at a time is an ability to work part time.” All that’s required is one doctor to say that you can accomplish this, and the fact that you do not work these few hours means that all of your benefits are terminated.

Lets be frank, who in their right mind will hire you? The insurance company is not required to prove that there is an employer out there that would actually hire you under these circumstances.

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Your employer may have been “snoozing” at the time he bought your policy that allows benefits to be terminated if the claimant “can work part time, but does not”!

The Courts have made it clear that these insurance policies are virtu- ally unregulated and the insurance companies can include, or exclude, whatever they want. It’s up to the employer who is buying the policy to be diligent!

In the case of Smith vs. Continental Insurance Company, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals stated that under federal law it would approve a long-term disability policy that stated, “pain could never support a finding of disability.”

This case sends out a clear message to Americans that they must review and clearly understand their employers’ long term disability policies and ensure that these policies will protect them and their loved ones in the case of a disability that prevents them from working.

Neil Smith was the Vice President of Sales for J.J. Haines & Co., a wholesale floor-covering distributor. He applied for disability bene- fits under his company’s policy called Continental (CNA), after an extensive history of back pain and an acute back injury that occurred in January 2001. Smith was awarded Social Security benefits for his injury. However, Continental (CNA) denied that he was unable to work and refused to pay and Neil Smith got nothing!

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If Neil Smith had known how weak this policy was before he became disabled and injured, he probably would have thought twice about putting his family’s financial future in the hands of his employer’s bad disability coverage!

First, the policy gave CNA the “discretion” to determine benefits. Remember, this means that the insurance company’s decision is presumed to be correct and will only be reversed if it is a totally unrea- sonable decision.

Next, the employer was duped into purchasing a policy that had unreasonably limited coverage for two years if the disability was one that was primarily diagnosed by fatigue, pain, headaches, stiffness, soreness, dizziness, numbness or loss of energy.

Not all group policies have this restriction! Employers who truly care to provide financial protection to their employees must learn to read “beyond the glossy sales brochures” and understand the insurance policies they are buying