UnumProvident Long Term Disability Insurance Scandal Continues
UnumProvident, the nation's largest long term disability insurance company, has been ordered to pay an $8 million dollar fine and change the way it evaluates long term disability claims in California in a settlement announced today. On the heels of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's wide ranging Unum settlement last year and a recent stinging LA Times article highlighting the problems in the entire disability insurance policy industry, UnumProvident has suffered another embarrassing blow. Now, residents of California have the best protections in the US against unscrupulous disability insurance company practices. No more "pizza parties" for employees who deny the most disability claims. Employees will now have a fighting chance to get the disability benefits they paid for and desperately need.
Hopefully, the California reforms will spread to all 50 states. If not, Congress should step in to reform ERISA, the federal statute that regulates group long term disability claims. To Unum's credit, based upon the experiences of my clients, UnumProvident does seem to have cleaned up its act recently. This settlement insures that such reforms shall continue. Now all we need is to have companies like MetLife, Cigna, and Disability Management Services jump on the reform bandwagon. Don't hold your breath!
I just started recieving long term disability in Oct005 Now I get a letter from The insurance company asking me if they can come to my home and interview me for 3 hours and use a lap top computer to type everything I say, is this unusual? it sounds like a deposition to me, What should I do and is this legal
I just started recieving long term disability in Oct005 Now I get a letter from The insurance company asking me if they can come to my home and interview me for 3 hours and use a lap top computer to type everything I say, is this unusual? it sounds like a deposition to me, What should I do and is this legal
I was employed by Unisys when my LTD began. Since then the facility that I worked at has been sold several times and HR people that I was used to speaking with tells me that I have to direct all questions to Unisys. My question is: If Unisys decides to terminate my LTD benefit for their own monetary reasons, what recourse do I have? E.g.: Is there an agency and or case law that I can rely on; or must I attempt to consult my own attorney.
Received UNUM benefits from 1998 to 2001 when they decided to terminate benefits. They allows business losses as offsets in 1998 and 1999, but disallowed business losses in 2000 and 2001, which would have otherwise kept me under the 80% threshold to remain considered disabled, even though I was physically disabled. This arbitrary decision has led to them trying to get me to pay them a lump sum in excess of $61,000 yet my CPA tells me that based on UNUM numbers AND the business losses had they considered as they did in 98/99, that UNUM not only underpaid benefits, but wrongfully terminated benefits. I was wondering what I should do. They are threatening litigation although I believe they used inconsistent approaches for their benefit, leaving me out in the cold.