Insurance Companies Are Your Worst Enemies
I have to laugh every time I see a commercial for an insurance company in which the insurance company says “You’re in good hands,” “We’re here to protect you,” “You can count on us to be there,” or some other such nonsense. The truth is that insurance companies are not your friends. They are not there to protect you, you are not in good hands with them, and you cannot count on them, especially when you need protection.
I call insurance “The Hoover Industry” after the vacuum cleaner, as the insurance company is mainly concerned with how much money it can bring in in a year and pay out as little as possible. The insurance industry tries hard to be a one-way business, with money coming in and nothing being paid out. The insurance companies hires people as adjusters whom they can convince that everybody is trying to pull a scam on them and they should act like the money is coming out of their own pocket. Adjusters know that their salaries, indeed their very jobs, are based on how much the claims they settle amount to every six months or a year.
This nature of the insurance company is not limited to just any one area. In motor vehicle accidents, the insurance company will pay as little as it possibly can to settle the case against its insured, even if its insured was drunk, driving the wrong way on a freeway, and collides with another car, causing death and serious injury to the driver and passenger of the other vehicle. Insurance companies will even deny liability if their insured failed to notice that the light had turned red and plows into the rear of a vehicle stopped for the red light! And when it comes to fairly compensating the injured victims for their injuries and damage, the insurance company will try to settle the case as cheaply as possible by offering a mere pittance. Insurance companies force people to hire lawyers to sue on their behalf to get a fair and adequate award from the insurance company for their medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, and other injuries and damages.
When it comes to paying health benefits, when you make a claim, your insurance company will often go back as far as to your original application for insurance and state that you didn’t disclose everything—such as you’re allergic to peanut butter—and therefore the policy is invalid and the insurance company doesn’t have to pay for your heart surgery or other medical procedure. Insurance companies routinely deny health benefits on the basis the illness was the result of a pre-existing condition and therefore is not covered by your policy, even if that pre-existing condition was something that happened years ago and in no way contributed to your present condition.
When a person has to stop working for a while because of a physical or mental condition, the disability insurance company will challenge his or her claim, or say that he or she is able to return to work much sooner than his or her doctor advises. A small company that has lost business because of, say, a fire or flood has made their place of business unusable, the insurance company will fight tooth and nail to pay as little as possible in lost profits and other business-related income.
Insurance companies like to lament to the public how they’re barely surviving. The truth is that, with the accounting practices insurance companies use, they can make it look on paper like they are barely hanging by a thread while in reality they are thriving, business is better than ever, and they are giving their top executives million dollar bonuses (on top of their million dollar salaries)!
Insurance companies have the obligation to deal with its insureds in “good faith” and their failure to do so can result in a major “bad faith” lawsuit. But insurance companies have so much money and so much power over members of the various legislatures that it is hard—if not downright impossible—to get them to act fairly and responsibly with all of its insureds’ claims. If you feel you are being treated unfairly by your insurance company, don’t let them walk all over you. Consult an experienced insurance bad faith lawyer to learn what your rights are and what action is appropriate to hold the insurance company accountable.
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