Pre-Existing Medical Conditions Preclude Eligibility for Long-Term Disability

If Lengthy-Time period Incapacity (LTD) protection is obtainable via an employer sponsored program out there at your home of employment, most of those group LTD plans will include a “pre-existing situation” exclusion. These kind of insurance policies should not underwritten for every of the people within the group, so pre-existing situation exclusions are designed to forestall the group LTD plan from insuring somebody who instantly presents a declare as quickly as their protection takes impact. The insurance coverage firm doesn’t take a look at the medical historical past of everybody within the group earlier than insuring them, so the corporate doesn’t know what the danger is of offering every particular person with insurance coverage protection. The insurance coverage firm desires to keep away from paying out claims to individuals who get hold of employment with the only real objective of securing LTD protection to allow them to instantly make a LTD declare.

Have you ever made a declare for LTD
advantages inside the first 12 months that you simply had been insured by your employer’s group
incapacity plan?

The pre-existing situation
exclusion will apply in the event you make a declare for LTD advantages inside the first twelve
months that you’re lined beneath the plan. Whereas this time interval may fluctuate,
usually it’s the one-year interval after the efficient date of protection. If
you submit a declare for advantages inside this one-year time-frame, that may
set off a “pre-existing situation investigation” by the insurance coverage firm.

What’s a Pre-Current
Situation Investigation?

The insurance coverage firm will evaluation
all of the medical info supplied in help of your LTD declare after an
software for advantages has been submitted. If a willpower is made that
you consulted with a physician, had any remedy, had been prescribed remedy, and/or
had diagnostic testing, for signs associated to your disabling medical situation
(bodily or psychological) previous to when your LTD insurance coverage took impact, the
insurance coverage can deny your declare primarily based on the pre-existing situation exclusion.   

The
objective of a “pre-existing situation investigation” is to guage your well being
simply earlier than your LTD protection grew to become efficient. This can contain a request for
all medical data for the related time interval. The time interval will fluctuate
relying on the coverage (so be sure you test the particular coverage wording in
your coverage), however it’s often for the interval 90 days previous to the efficient
date of your protection. For instance, in case your protection grew to become efficient on
January 1, 2021, the insurance coverage firm will look again on the window between
October 3, 2020 and December 31, 2020. 
That is what is often known as the “look again window.” 

Figuring out Whether or not a
Situation Will Be Excluded as “Pre-Current” is Not At all times Clear.

In 2019 and 2020, we represented a person who had an extended
psychiatric historical past that included analysis and remedy associated to attention-deficit/hyperactivity
dysfunction (ADHD), generalized anxiousness dysfunction and insomnia. He the truth is noticed a
psychiatrist associated to those situations through the 90-day look-back window so
the insurance coverage firm denied his LTD declare on the premise that his declare was
excluded by the pre-existing situation provision within the relevant coverage.

Throughout the administrative enchantment, we supplied the insurance coverage firm with medical documentation establishing that the present LTD declare being pursued was primarily based upon impairment(s) trigger by main depressive dysfunction and agoraphobia. We satisfied the insurance coverage firm that whereas our shopper did have a major psychiatric historical past, he didn’t seek the advice of with a psychological well being skilled or search any remedy or analysis for main depressive dysfunction and/or agoraphobia through the 90-day look again window. The insurance coverage firm reversed the choice to disclaim the declare primarily based upon software of the pre-existing situation exclusion and paid the declare.    In case you are experiencing a denial of LTD advantages as a result of the insurance coverage firm decided {that a} pre-existing situation clause within the group LTD coverage excludes your declare, please contact lawyer Kevin M. Zietz for a free session.