Cavey and Barrett Blog

Long Term Disability Attorney Richard Johnson Discusses ERISA’s Effects On Clients

Is there a Good Book on Long Term Disability Policies for Florida Long Term Disability Policies Holders that You Would Recommend?

Fibromyalgia and Your Long Term Disability Claim

Surveillance and Surprise Visits in Your Long Term Disability Claim

Long Term Disability Carriers Right to Be Repaid | LTD Lawyer in Florida

Mental Nervous Limitations and How Long Term Disability Carriers Will Use This Clause to Deny Your Benefits | Tampa Bay Disability Attorneys

Long Term Disability Messes That Can Cause You Serious Financial Problems | Tampa Bay Disability Lawyer

New Study Links XMR Virus to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome | Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Long Term Disability Cases Denied

Insurer's Wrongfully Deny Claims | No Legitimate Reason For Denial | Florida Disability Insurance Lawyer

In the L.A. Daily Journal, Evan George takes a look at California's disability insurance and finds that insurers wrongfully deny claims, despite findings by treating doctors and the federal goverment that they are too sick or hurt to hold a job.

The first in a two part series, the story shows that insurers create incentives for employees to turn down claims. Once denied, workers must navigate a complicated bureaucracy that takes years.

Of the cases that reach trial, judges found in nearly half the cases that the insurance companies had no legitimate reason to deny the claims. But because the injured workers can't sue for damages, there is no peril for the insurance companeis to repeatedly deny costly claims.

If you need a qualified disability insurance lawyer in Florida, please contact us at the Law Office of Cavey & Barrett for all your disability needs.

The 2009 Economy and the Payment of Long Term Disability Benefits. | St. Petersburg Long Term Disability Lawyer

What Is ERISA and Why Should I Care if I am a Long Term Disability Applicant? | Florida Long Term Disability Lawyer

What Every Medical Professional Needs to Know about Disability Insurance Policies | Medical Professionals Disability Insurance Lawyer

What Every Medical Professional Needs to Know about Disability Insurance Policies | Medical Professionals Disability Insurance Lawyer

How Difficult is it to Get Long Term Disability Benefits? | Florida Disability Insurance Lawyer

7 Tips for Long Term Disability Policy Holders Before Applying for Benefits | Tampa Bay Disability Insurance Lawyer

The 2009 Economy and UNUM's Payment of Long Term Disability Benefits | Florida Insurance Disability Lawyer

How to Avoid the 23 Mistakes You Can Make When The Long Term Disability Carrier Wants to Take Your Statement | Florida Long Term Disability Attorney

Financial Pre-Planning Doesn't End When You Buy Your Long Term Disability Policy | ERISA Disability Insurance Lawyer

Your financial preplanning did not begin and end with the purchase a long-term disability policy. That was only the beginning!

You still have to make significant plans for your financial future. What do I mean?

If you suffer from a gradual onset disease like degenerative joint disease, Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease, multiple sclerosis, or Alzheimer's, the disease process will give you the time you need to make significant work and financial decisions.

There are a number of steps that you must take, sooner and not later, in financial preplanning.

1.  Learn about your disease and how it progresses over time.

It is important for you to understand how your disease will impact your ability to work, how it will progress over time, what your future medical needs are going to be, and when you will become unable to work.

The answers to these questions will impact how long you will be able to work and maintain any group insurance coverage.

2.  Look at your current financial condition and determine how it might change over time.

This step requires a critical look at your current financial condition and obligations.
What are your assets? Is there any disability coverage that would make the mortgage payment if you're unable to work or disability policies that would make payment on in the vehicles or consumer debt? How much do you owe? Do you  have a budget?

How would that budget change if you become disabled? Can you get your finances
under control in the time frame you have available to continue working? If not,
how were you going to meet those obligations?

Do you know how long it takes to get Social Security disability benefits?
When would you be entitled to Medicare? Can you afford to cobra your group insurance coverage? How long can you Cobra your group insurance? Is there going to be a gap in time between you running out of group health insurance coverage and be eligible for Medicare? Can you find alternative insurance?

3.  Set financial goals.

These financial goals can be short-term or long-term. Do you have flexibility built in to these goals as your condition changes? How are you going to be able to live on a reduced income? How are you going to get medical treatment with reduced or limited medical benefits?

4.  Obtaining assistance.

It is crucial that you understand what your long-term disability policy provides
in the way of benefits, whether those benefits can be reduced by various offsets
such as Social Security, how long you are entitled to benefits, what limitations
may exist on coverage.

It is also crucial that you understand your rights to Social Security disability benefits
and the amount of benefits you might be entitled to, including dependent benefits.
Many states have a significant delay in getting a Social Security disability hearing. Your data eligibility for Medicare will depend on the date you become disabled for Social Security disability purposes.

It may be necessary for you to hire a long-term disability or Social Security disability Attorney and you can use this time to get answers to your questions. You may also have to consult with your insurance agent, tax advisor or financial planner.

5.  Make flexible decisions.

As your disability progresses, your options will change, and you need to be prepared financially to address those changes.  Having a game plan before your disability progresses gives you more control. Unfortunately, your options can become significantly limited if you fail to get advice before you become disabled. It's not uncommon that decisions become more typical as your disease progresses and your ability to make those decisions comes compromised.

Financial preplanning is a team effort, and one that should be done earlier and not later. Don't place yourself in a situation where you have to struggle to make difficult financial decisions in a time of need.

Experienced long-term disability/ERISA and Social Security attorney Nancy Cavey can provide guidance to you in the financial preplanning required as a result of your disability.

Answering these broad-based questions isn't easy. Help is a phone call away. You can contact Nancy Cavey, an experienced long-term disability attorney at 727-894-3188.

Will The Long Term Disability Carrier Spy on Me? | St. Petersburg Disability Insurance Lawyer

Signing Long Term Disability/ERISA Medical Release Can Destroy Your Claim | Tampa Bay Long Term Disability Lawyer

Even the British Know That ERISA is Broken! | St. Petersburg Disability Insurance Lawyer

Barack Obama must stop the supreme court from providing immunity to health insurers and other corporate law-breakers

Simon Lazarus and Ian Millhiser
guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 13 2008 18.00 GMT
Fourteen years ago, a single mother named Ann Dunham began a long, ultimately unsuccessful battle with cancer – and a simultaneous war with her health insurance provider. Over and over, as Ms Dunham's son, Barack Obama, recounted during the October 6 presidential debate, company representatives suggested that his mother's cancer "may have been a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay her treatment".

Ann Dunham's story is hardly unique. Millions of Americans know well that the pain of serious illness is often compounded by endless jousts with insurers arbitrarily withholding coverage of physician-prescribed care. Myriad court records tell the stories of people like Maureen Kurtek, who lost five fingertips and most of her right foot after her husband's employer switched to an insurer which resisted continuing to cover her lupus treatment. And of construction manager James Lind, who was able to continue working despite his multiple sclerosis, until his insurer abruptly declined to continue paying for the prescription that had kept his MS at bay. And Rhonda Bast, who died after her insurer refused coverage of a bone marrow transplant which could have prevented her cancer from spreading to her brain.

Many of these sad stories could and should have been avoided. The fault lies with senior federal officials driven by the same deregulatory fervour responsible for enabling the imprudent lending frenzy behind the current financial crisis. In this case, however, the zealots do not run administrative agencies or departments. They preside at the United States supreme court. Over the past quarter-century, court majorities, led principally by Justice Antonin Scalia, have systematically dismantled the framework of laws designed to prevent benefit providers from breaking their promises to patients like Ann Dunham.

The keystone of this protective framework is the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, known by its acronym, Erisa. Congress passed Erisa in 1974 to protect the pensions and employer-provided health plans which millions of Americans rely upon. Yet the supreme court has twisted this law into something quite different. As noted by Senate judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, the court's perversion of Erisa is a prime example of decisions that have turned laws "on their heads, making them protections for big business rather than ordinary citizens."

Erisa sets strict standards to ensure that employers and insurers administering group benefit plans act "solely in the interests of beneficiaries for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits," not their own bottom-line. But the court has rendered these protections meaningless. In a Catch-22 decision written by Justice Scalia, a 5-4 majority held that, when plan administrators violate their obligations under the law, victims may not recover any monetary compensation for resulting losses they suffer. Adding insult to injury, the court has read Erisa as a warrant for "pre-empting" – ie abolishing – pre-existing state law protections, leaving victims with literally no recourse. Thus, in the words of, the late Justice Byron White, the supreme court has achieved the "perverse anomaly of leaving those Congress set out to protect with less protection than they enjoyed before Erisa was enacted."

When forced to apply the supreme court's "tangled" Erisa rules, ordinarily circumspect federal judges have often harshly attacked them. Most famously, the late Chief Judge Edward Becker, a Republican named to the third circuit court of appeals by President Reagan, excoriated Justice Scalia and his allies for converting Erisa "into a shield that insulates HMOs from liability for even the most egregious acts of dereliction committed against plan beneficiaries, a state of affairs directly contrary to the intent of Congress." Judge Becker stressed that the court's distortion of Erisa creates "strong incentives for HMOs to deny claims in bad faith or otherwise 'stiff' participants." The systemic result, he added, is a "'race to the bottom' in which the most profitable HMOs will be those that deny claims most frequently."

A recently discovered insurance company memo (pdf) confirms Judge Becker's insight. This smoking gun, an internal company directive, instructed claims processors to structure "new and existing policies" so as to ensure that they would be subject to Erisa. Once covered by this federal law originally hailed as a landmark safeguard for beneficiaries, the memo forecast, the company could eliminate over 90% of its payouts to claimants seeking redress for denials of coverage.

Immunity for health insurers is just one gift which the supreme court has given to powerful interests that find compliance with the law inconvenient. The most notorious recent example is the 2007 Ledbetter decision, in which the court's five conservatives held that victims of pay discrimination have only six short months to seek relief – even if they do not learn of the discrimination until years later. But the supreme court has also thwarted Congress' efforts to protect Americans with disabilities against discrimination (pdf). It has erected unprecedented barriers to patients seeking redress for unlawfully withheld Medicaid benefits, pre-empted state predatory lending (pdf) curbs, and extended lawsuit immunity to the manufacturers of dangerous medical devices. In case after case, the court has achieved de facto repeal of federal guarantees by eliminating citizens' ability to enforce them in court, and, through pre-emption, secured outright repeal of state law protections.

As the new president rolls out new proposals for ensuring health and economic security, he should not ignore the court's drive to roll back existing safeguards. If he acts fast, he could score some significant early wins, and send a clear signal that the new sheriff in town is serious about justice for ordinary citizens. Early in this Congressional term, it could be possible to legislatively "fix" decisions that distort major laws like Erisa and the Civil Rights Act equal pay guarantees upended in the Ledbetter case. His agency heads can rescind the mass of Bush administration regulations and policies that pre-empt vital state legal protections. His justice department can press the federal courts to faithfully construe laws in line with their original reformist purposes, and stop importing stealth deregulatory designs recently in vogue. Most important for the long-term, the president, together with allies in the Senate, can sensitise new judicial nominees to the priority of robust enforcement of guarantees protecting Americans' pocket book needs.

By targeting courts that coddle corporate law-breakers, President Obama can engineer change that will save millions of Americans from major financial, physical, and emotional travail."

Simon Lazarus and Ian Millhiser are attorneys with the National Senior Citizens Law Centre

Answering these broad-based questions isn't easy. Help is a phone call away. You can contact Nancy Cavey, an experienced long-term disability attorney at 727-894-3188.

Can the Long Term Disability Carrier Force You to Use A Social Security Disability Claims Service They Recommend Like Allsup? | Clearwater ERISA Disability Attorney

Many long-term disability insurance policies require you to apply for Social Security disability benefits, and will offer the services of companies like Allsup, Occudanta, Advantage 2000, Disability Services, Inc. to help you with your Social Disability Claim. Should you use these companies?

As an experienced long-term disability/ERISA and Social Security disability Attorney. My answer is unequivocally "No"!

In fact, UNUM was convicted on making LTD applicants apply for Social Security disability even if the applicant was not entitled to or qualified or eligible for Social Security disability.

Of course, some may think my answer is based on the fee I might earn on the Social Security disability claim. Nothing is further from the truth!

In my experience, most of these companies have non-attorney representatives handling the Social Security disability claim.  The quality of this representation is suspect. I have had long-term disability cases where the company recommended by the long-term disability carrier did not develop the evidence properly before the Social Security administration. I have had other cases where the company recommended by long-term disability carrier has purposely developed a condition, such as fibromyalgia or psychiatric conditions, that only provide limited long-term disability benefits and have ignored proceeding on Social Security disability claims that could entitle the applicant to continued long-term disability benefits.

If you do get Social Security disability benefits, you are generally entitled to a retroactive lump sum payment. The long-term disability carrier's want their money back – immediately. Allsup, Occudanta, Advantage 2000, Disability Services, Inc. will have you sign an agreement that allows them to automatically a withdrawal from your checking account any overpayment that might be due to your long-term disability insurance company. On the face of it, that's fair.

However, more often than not, long-term disability carrier's will immediately suspend the payment of your long-term disability benefits when you been awarded Social Security benefits saying that you are "no longer disabled" based on your long-term disability policy requirements.

As long as you keep the Social Security overpayment in your checking account, you and your long-term disability attorney will have greater leverage with a long-term disability insurance company to get your long-term disability benefits reinstated

Unfortunately, I find long-term disability carrier's use these companies for their own best interest. They want these companies to help you get Social Security disability benefits so that they can take back all the long term disability benefits that you've been paid, and then justify their immediate suspension of your long-term disability benefits. These companies will also share with your long-term disability carrier the medical reports they obtained or develop in your Social Security disability Claim. If they develop a bad report, you can be assured that report will get to your long-term disability carrier and be a basis for denial of your long-term disability claim.

Allsup, Occudanta, Advantage 2000, Disability Services, Inc. will tell you if they work for you when, in fact, they get the referrals from a long-term disability carriers and get paid by the long-term disability carrier. They will use any agreement you sign to suck out of your checking account any Social Security benefits you get, and they will share a bad information about you with your long-term disability insurance company.

What should you do? If you have signed a contract with Allsup, Occudanta, Advantage 2000, Disability Services, Inc, set a one sentence letter to the Social Security administration terminating their services. If you signed an authorization allowing Allsup, Occudanta, Advantage 2000, Disability Services, Inc, to take money from your checking account, you need to revoke it immediately by writing to your bank and keeping a copy for your records. Send Allsup, Occudanta, Advantage 2000, Disability Services, Inc a copy of that revocation by certified mail.

Allsup, Occudanta, Advantage 2000, Disability Services, Inc may tell you that the long-term disability carrier won't include any attorney's fees paid to Allsup, Occudanta, Advantage 2000, Disability Services, Inc in any long-term disability overpayment calculations. There is anti-discrimination provisions in ERISA, so that if a long-term disability carrier pays a fee to any of these companies or reduces the overpayment by a Social Security attorney fee, it has to do the same thing if you hire a private Social Security disability Attorney. Don't be intimidated!

You should find an attorney who does both Social Security disability and long-term disability/ERISA litigation. Cavey and Barrett are experienced Social Security disability and long-term disability attorneys who coordinate the handling of both claims. We develop the necessary evidence needed in both Social Security disability and long-term disability claims.

If you can't find a lawyer who does both, make sure that your Social Security disability lawyer is coordinating his work with your long-term disability attorney. There are times when the Social Security disability lawyer can be working at cross purposes. For example, they may be developing a psychiatric aspect of your claim for Social Security purposes and be unaware that there is a limitation in your long-term disability policy for mental conditions.

Don't be taken advantage of by your long-term disability insurance company or Allsup, Occudanta, Advantage 2000, or Disability Services, Inc.  Protect yourself by hiring experienced Tampa/St. Petersburg/Clearwater long-term disability/ERISA Social Security disability Attorney, such as Nancy Cavey.

Answering these broad-based questions isn't easy. Help is a phone call away. You can contact Nancy Cavey, an experienced long-term disability attorney at 727-894-3188.

Long Term Disability Carriers Clog Up The Social Secuirty System | Florida Disability Insurance Lawyer

What is ERISA and Why Should You Care? | Florida Disability Insurance Attorney

Must a Long Term Disability Carrier Give You Medical Reports They Rely on To Deny Your Claim? | Tampa St. Petersburg Disability Insurance Attorney