Quiat on Claims : New York Disability Insurance Lawyer & Attorney : Michael Quiat : Uscher Quiat Uscher & Russo Law Firm : ERISA, Denied Claims

A case in the Sixth Circuit, Balmert v. Reliance Standard Life Ins. Co., 2008 WL 4404299, S.D. Ohio,2008, reminded us that advisers to claimants, unfamiliar with the practice of disability income insurance claims, can sometimes overlook a client’s fundamental right.

An ERISA litigation is tough enough to win even when the claimant dots all the “i’s” and crosses all “t’s”. But, overlooking the claimant’s fundamental right to review and respond to a critical independent medical examiner’s (IME) report, bought and paid for by the insurer, see IME, is a disability insurance “no-no”.

It is important to note that in Balmert, the claimant wanted the plan administrator’s denial of her claim for benefits to be overturned because she had not been given the opportunity to rebut the report of the insurer’s medical expert.

The Sixth Circuit, in denying her appeal, stated clearly that she had a right to review the IME report and to rebut and/or otherwise comment on it, but her failure to review and rebut the report, since she had never asked to see it prior to the litigation, was not grounds for granting a reversal.

Not having seen it, we have no way of knowing if a review and rebuttal of the IME report could have carried the day in this case, but we do know that each and every report or piece of evidence used by the insurance company to reject a claim should be examined in detail and clearly rebutted by the claimant, if warranted, during the administrative appeal process. If a claimant waits for the opportunity to do so in the actual litigation, it may be too late.

For a claimant not to do so at the administrative level may hand the insurance company an undeserved “leg up” in its battle to deny benefits.

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Don’t expect a disability insurance company to spend a lot of time analyzing a claim which appears to be clearly deniable on its face. We all know insurance companies are not in the business of paying, especially if they find what appears to be a clear exclusion to hang their denial on.

We recently took on an appeal from a Unum denial for an emergency room doctor who had suffered from glaucoma for years.

Having made full disclosure to the insurance carrier of his glaucoma condition when he bought the policy in 1993, Unum issued the policy, but inserted an exclusion to cover the possibility of his glaucoma condition causing him to become disabled. Our client had accepted this reasonable restriction, believing he could rely on treatment and medication to keep his glaucoma in check.
His policy exclusion read:
 

“The insured is not covered for any loss resulting from either or both eyes, except by the following table of benefits on form 809 attached.”

In 2006, the doctor suffered some optic nerve damage from Sarcoidosis, resulting in some minor visual loss, but was able to continue working as an emergency room physician.
In 2008, our client underwent coronary bypass surgery after which he noticed a marked loss of vision. This loss of vision was attributed to postoperative hypotension which diminished the flow of blood to his optic nerve and resulted in ischemic optic nerve damage.

Being no longer able to work because of his vision problem, the doctor filed a long term disability claim. Unum took the position that his loss of vision was caused by his eyes and was therefore clearly excluded under the policy. Unum paid for the 12-month exclusion period and then refused to pay for further long term disability benefits. Unsurprisingly, Unum took the position that the loss “…resulted from either or both eyes…”

Why should Unum or any other insurance company look further under these conditions? Usually when talking about the eyes, we are talking about “seeing” or vision. If the doctor’s claim was based upon loss of vision, end of story as far as an insurer is concerned. Why look further if the exclusion seems to mean the insurer doesn’t have to pay?

When the case came to us, we reviewed carefully the language of the exclusion. Then we carefully examined the doctor’s medical history and found that his loss of vision was not caused by his “eye or eyes”, but was caused by damage to his optic nerve which is not part of the eye. So, if the doctor’s loss of vision was not caused by his “eye or eyes”, it is not excluded and the disability policy should pay in full according to its terms.

So, what at first blush would seem to be a slam dunk for the insurer turns out to be a slam dunk for our client if he can get the insurance company to see it his way. Although the claim had been denied, we appealed to Unum on behalf of the claimant, offering proof that his occupational disability was not caused “by his eyes” but was caused by his optic nerve ischemia, the optic nerve not being part of his eye.
This condition was no different from a vision impairment caused by a blow to the head which damaged the optic nerve and caused a loss of vision.

Before filing the appeal we gathered the appropriate medical reports and set forth our arguments in what we thought was a clear and cogent manner, particularly pointing out that the exclusion had been written into the policy by the insurance company so that under the law, any question about its meaning would be interpreted against the insurer.

After reviewing this appeal, (copy of which is available on request), Unum reversed its earlier rejection of the claim and now has agreed to pay benefits.
It’s tough to lead an insurer to water, let alone make it drink, following denial of a claim which an insurer believes is clearly excluded by its policy language.

Luckily for our client, experience, research and a narrowly focused analysis made it happen.

Sometimes, we love what we do!

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A recent article outlining the effect of insurance regulators trying to do away with the “discretionary clause” in ERISA disability income insurance policies raised an interesting and basic issue concerning life in these United States.

Why do we keep kidding ourselves about what we do?

The “discretionary” issue here concerns whether plan administrators should have the discretion to determine whether a claim is covered by an ERISA policy when the insurance company is both the insurer which will pay the claim and the administrator of the ERISA plan. It doesn’t take a genius to know that this “discretionary” situation creates a powerful incentive for the administrator to favor the insurance company in making that decision.

Defenders of this “discretionary” system say this procedure keeps costs manageable and that to do otherwise would raise the cost of insurance because with the discretionary clause the insurer will pay fewer claims. They are correct. But, what does unfair favoritism have to do with protecting the sick or disabled?

Is it better to call a thing a nice sounding name, but not give the nice-sounding protection the name implies? Have we become so used to Madison Avenue that we are willing to play the ad game with the terms of our insurance policies?

When you buy an insurance policy, you expect to be fully protected against risks you bought the policy for. Why should the insurer insurer have the advantage of unfairly denying your claim and then having the courts constrained to defer to that unfair denial, simply because such a system leads to smaller disability payouts and, hence, lower premiums. If the insurance doesn’t cover what it is supposed to cover, who cares how low the premiums are?

What good is a policy that doesn’t do what it s supposed to do? And, how far do we carry this sham?

Policies are supposed to be statistically underwritten so that the insurance company knows the risk and sets its price accordingly. If the price is high, so be it. Reduce some of the benefits so that the premium meets the cost. Don’t use an artificial stricture on paying benefits to deprive deserving claimants what is due them.

During the last decade, we have all had the experience of living a lie: Banks urging people with bad credit to take their credit cards and use them recklessly; calling “liar’s loans” home mortgages; thinking housing prices would go up and up and up forever; Wall Street becoming a crap-shooting gambler, shuffling paper back and forth and making billions in bonuses on the paper shuffle; rating companies being fooled (or worse, just okaying any deal for the fee money); and on and on and on.

We are suffering for living the lie because it felt so good. Now, let’s start getting real. If insurance requires a certain premium, require that it be paid. Shortcuts created by fudging what is actually going on leads to injustice and worse.

If an ERISA policy calls for “discretion” on the part of an administrator who works for an insurer, and the decision is required to get deference in the courts, let’s call it what it is:

A maybe disability income policy

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