Question:
How does long term care disability insurance work? If a medical condition keeps

someone from working? I have read the long term care and disability insurance paperwork and am having a hard time making sense of all of it. How do you get on disability when disease makes continued employment impossible? How does long care insurance work? Would anyone with experience please let me know? This is very serious for me and my family. Thanks for your help. Ann    — Ann B. (posted on June 11, 2004)

June 11, 2004
Hi Ann, I worked for General Motors and became physically unable to do the work anymore. I had to hire an attorney to handle mine because it was workmans comp. GM okayed for me to retire with my pension benefits and I had to apply for social security. I was approved, then 5 months later I was elgible for Medicare insurance. Medicare becomes primary and my Blue Cross became secondary. Medicare is actually really good insurance. It paid for my surgery and Blue Cross picked up the co-pay. I hope this answers some of your questions, if not email anything else you want to know. Linda
   — kkubinski99

June 11, 2004
Hi ann, I had to go on long term disability and SSD.. I was approved for my social security in less than 2 weeks with no problems what so ever but couln't recieve the benifits for 6 months. (my disease is visual and I showed alot of very personal pictures) my private long term disability was a whole other matter.. fight from hell.. of course good ole cigna was the carrier. I had to hire a lawyer (even though the government said I AM disabled) and the lawyer won of course.. but he ended up taking 1/3 of my bennifits.. "EVERY MONTH"!! I had to fight with him for him to settle as this was leaving me with less than 350.00 per month.. then came my one year eval.. cigna found out I had WLS and said I was no longer disabled.. OMG.. my disability has NOTHING to do with my weight. I appealed it and lost.. I could hire a lawyer again and be in the same situation with having to fight him for the 1/3 he wants.. it's simply not worth the amount I would end up getting so cigna wins yet again.. I would think that social security would help me becuase with out the few extra dollars from cigna I qualify for SSI.. so you'd think they would help me fight it so they wouldn't have to give me more money.. nope!! and the social security lawyers who fight for your social security (in my area anyway) won't handle private ins.. it's been a year this month that they terminated me so I am running out of time to do anything about it anyway. to answer your question about how it works it kinda depends on your plan.. for me I was paid (before lawyers cut) 60% of what I was earning at my job. you find out your information of who your LTD company is and what the plans out line is through your human resource department.. but before you go asking questions be sure this is what you want/need to do.. and be sure you have a doctor to back you up 100%... good luck theresa
   — theresa D.

June 12, 2004
Ann, I'm not clear about what you are asking. There are both long-term disability and long-term care policies. They are different. Long-term DISABILITY insurance pays you either a percentage of your salary (usually somewhere between 50% and 75%), or some predetermined flat amount (say $1200 a month) while you are unable to work. To collect on this policy, you have to prove that you are unable to do your job because of medical reasons. There is usually a waiting period for benefits (often between 3 months and 6 months), which menas that you have to have been unable to work for that amount of time before any benefits will be paid. Often these policies are provided by employers as part of your benefit plan, but you can also buy them privately. The detials will be a little different depending on whether it's an employer or private plan, but they work basically as described above. Long-term CARE policies, on the other hand, provide benefits to a caregiver or nurisng home to provide services for your care that are not covered by medical insurance. They do not generally have any income benefits. So, the first thing you need to do is to determine what kind of plan you have--a long-term disability plan or a long-term care plan. Then, you neeed to complete the application for benefits. If the policy is part of your employee benefit package, then your Human Resources Department should be able to help you. If it's a private policy, then the insruance company should help you with the paperwork.
   — Vespa R.