If your long term disability benefits were smooth sailing in 2022, congratulations. But does that mean the same will occur in 2023? Maybe. And maybe not.
COVID had a huge impact on all insurance companies. Life insurance companies are still being slammed with claims for millions of Americans. According to data from the American Council of Life Insurers, in 2021 U.S. life insurers paid more than $90 billion to beneficiaries in 2020, a 15.4% increase compared to 2019.
Insurance companies use many data points to set pricing, including “mortality assumptions,” projections of death rates, and “capital requirements” needed to keep insurance companies solvent. Your case is nothing but a loss for the insurance company.
Protecting profits for shareholders drives insurance company decision making.
Long COVID is still so new to the disability insurance world that we don’t know exactly what will happen, but based on more than twenty years in this practice area, we can make several educated points:
Expect more denials and terminations as insurance companies protect their profits
Long COVID will be treated like fibromyalgia or Epstein-Barr cases, where one tactic was to insist the person was either a malingerer, was suffering from “symptoms” but not a covered disease, or both.
If you have concerns about your disability claim for 2023, we invite you to call our office at 877-583-2524.
