Disability insurance companies are eager to take your money. They are eager to promise you benefits if they are ever needed. They willingly point out to you how much better they are than the next company. But, if you are ever unfortunate enough to have to collect disability, they are quick to determine that you can return back to work and cancel your benefits, no matter what your physical or mental ailment may be.

Unfortunately for you, in recent years disability carriers have been challenging disability claims more and more frequently. The incentive for this is simple - they can save money. Claims can be potentially very expensive. Even eliminating one or two claims out of one thousand can be profitable. And insurance companies can come out ahead because they have the resources and time to wear out any claims that physicians make. They can win because they are the ones who have your money. The Goliath disability companies often prevail because they know the difficulty that physicians, or anyone for that matter, have trying to overturn their decisions.

The disability companies also know that many claims that had been paid in the past actually were not legitimate. This definitely affected their profitability. Now they treat all claims the same, whether legitimate or not, because they know that many claimants will not fight or will be unable to fight their decision.

The economic forces that were present in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s have changed and so has the approach insurance companies take. In the past market competition resulted in lower prices, expanded benefits, liberal definitions of disability and generous offerings of benefits. This occurred for different reasons. Insurance companies did not have the many years of experience that was necessary in order to establish rates and they used old actuarial statistics from the 1960s that indicated that physicians and white-collar workers had a history of low disability claims.

Higher than anticipated losses, especially in the physician market, began to appear. Eventually, many disability insurance companies were sold or administered by other companies. The Paul Revere Insurance Company, for example, has agreements with New York Life Insurance Company, Prudential and Life of Vermont, The New England Insurance Company, and Equitable Insurance Company to sell and administer disability policies. General American, Lincoln National and Manulife no longer offer disability insurance policies.

At one time physicians, dentists and even attorneys were viewed as desirable occupations to insure. Since they are high wage earners they wanted high coverage. Now these occupations are viewed as much less desirable because of their recent history of increased claims, which may be no fault of the insured.

It was not foreseen that modern medicine would be able to save lives and keep many people alive and remain chronically disabled. Today, many claims result from disabilities that are more subjective and complex in character because psychological and physical problems coexist. Even new illnesses have emerged and are more difficult to diagnose and treat, such as AIDS, carpal tunnel syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome. Additionally, physicians have experienced increasing pressures in their practices due to health care reforms, loss of income from Medicare and private insurance reimbursements, and loss of control in their practices due to managed care and HMOs. This has resulted in a marked increase in claims due to depression, stress and anxiety.

As managed care became more prevalent, the income growth of many physicians slowed and, in some cases, declined. Since the medical disability benefits of these physicians did not decrease with their declining income, many physicians were actually overinsured and those who became disabled found that they received benefits nearly equal to or even greater than their normal income. This became a significant problem for insurance companies.

Consequently, physician disability policies have continually become more expensive, less comprehensive, and more difficult to purchase. In 1997, for example, Paul Revere Life Insurance Company, the nations largest disability insurance provider, completely eliminated "own occupation" coverage to physicians as well as everyone else.

Today, the changing economic forces have resulted in less liberal policy definitions and benefits and more frequent claim denials. Many disability companies have left the market or decreased their coverage. Those companies that remain aggressively attempt to deny claims and, as already indicated, have the resources and time to wear you out.

Some companies have questioned the non-cancellable feature of disability policies, which guarantees payment of your premiums until age 65. Other companies have limited or eliminated the length of time they will pay benefits for "own occupation" disability to two years and eliminated lifetime benefits. Others have eliminated "own occupation" coverage entirely, which means that if a specialist (anesthesiologist, orthopedic surgeon, cardiothorasic surgeon, neurosurgeon, otolaryngologist, etc.) is disabled but able to perform any type of medical work (or even non-medical work, such as flipping burgers), disability is not present. Some companies pay only a maximum of $10,000 per month. And many companies now pay a maximum of only two years of disability benefits for a psychological disorder. If you are a high risk and high income physician companies are also ready to cancel your policy if they receive a late payment.

The purpose of this pamphlet is to help you to understand how disability insurance companies attempt to deceive you and what you need to do in order to protect yourself from the unscrupulous tactics employed by disability insurance companies when they try to deny you legitimate benefits. The tactics that insurance companies will use may or may not change but the frequency of denials invariably will increase over time.