US SENATE INVESTIGATES INSURERS’ ACTIONS ON DISABILITY CLAIMANTS

Republican US Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa has sent letters to nine insurers — Cigna, Unum, MetLife, Aetna, Hartford, Lincoln, Prudential, Standard and Reliance Standard — asking for detailed information on their handling of disability claims, reports the New York Times . Mr Grassley had noted that the sick and injured often had to wait for more than a year for the Social Security administration to process claims, and he wants to know how many insurance claimants have been told to apply for Social Security benefits as a condition of their insurance claim being met, and what methods the insurers had used to ensure that those people it forced to apply for benefits had a reasonable chance of obtaining them. The Social Security rules for disability are considerably stricter than those applied by insurers, meaning that many who would qualify under an insurance claim would not do so under Social Security. Two insurers, Cigna and Unum, have been accused in lawsuits of incorrectly forcing people into the Social Security system in order to avoid or delay playing claims, the report said. Senator Grassley is asking the insurers how their methods of treating disability claimants impact their reserve requirements and to “describe the timing and financial flows resulting from these adjustments”.