The Hidden Secret of Long-Term Disability Insurers

I will find out next week if my country’s public service finds me disabled enough to obtain a disability pension.

I didn’t want to apply for this pension, as I don’t consider myself disabled.

I consider myself to have an energy depleting illness that makes me unable to work enough hours to make 70% of the salary I was making when forced to apply for Long-Term Disability (LTD) benefits through my employer’s insurer.

This is the threshold of disability to receive monthly benefits under the contract agreed to by my (former) employer and the insurer.

I was forced to apply because the insurer threatened to cut my LTD benefits by $1,545 – the maximum amount a person can get as a disability pension.

Very few people ever receive this amount, as you would need to have worked at a consistently high salary for decades never stopping for things like illness, a maternity leave or a layoff (the pension amounts are based on how many years you have worked and your salary level, minus the seven (7) you received the least income).

I worked for 32 years (granted, not always fulltime) and benefited from a reasonably high salary for the last 10 years of my career and would receive about $600 per month.

Cutting benefits by $1545 per month for non-compliance is plain cruel, but as they say, “cruelty is the point”.

What’s more, if you apply and get denied, the insurer will use the same pressure tactic to force you to fill an appeal. If this appeal gets denied, you will then be directed to bring your case to a tribunal of last instance.

This means our taxes are going towards paying public servants to review the applications and appeals of people like me, for the sole purpose of reducing the LTD payment expenses of large private, for-profit companies.

While they spend hours reviewing our cases, pay doctors for reports, etc., individuals who desperately need disability pensions as a sole source of income, wait countless months to have their applications reviewed.

If we’re approved (doubtful because the proof of disability threshold is much higher than to obtain LTD benefits), our taxes pay for a portion of the LTD benefits that should be at the charge of the for-profit companies.

And the clincher, the payments are retroactive. This means that years’ worth of payments are being poured from a government pension program, into the pockets of insurance companies.

The retroactive payments go to the insurer.

I still spend most of my waking hours working to find a road to recovery. Filling forms telling the world I am useless did nothing to help me achieve this, on the contrary. It took me two (2) weeks to recover physically and emotionally from applying.

Next week, I’ll find out if I need to spend more of my lacking energy and endurance filling forms and arguing to save a large for-profit company some expenses.

It feels like work I’m doing for the insurer, while spending money and the little energy I have, to also prove to them that I cannot work.

Remember though, “cruelty is the point”. The insurer wants to stop paying me completely and the quickest way for it to happen, is for me to die.

In my darkest days I hold on to that thought, and keep living.