Long-Term Disability Insurance And Pre-Existing Conditions

A pre-existing condition exclusion is a provision in a long-term disability insurance policy that limits or excludes coverage for a disability caused by a condition that existed before the policy became effective. However, not all pre-existing conditions are excluded from coverage.

You’re probably here today because your long-term disability insurance company has denied your claim for benefits, saying they’re denying you due to a pre-existing condition. We will help you understand what pre-existing means and how the term applies to long-term disability claims. Below, we provide several examples that help to explain long-term disability insurance and pre-existing conditions.

Pre-Existing Condition Exclusions in Disability Insurance Policies

Under a pre-existing condition exclusion, if an insured person has a pre-existing condition that causes them to become disabled within a certain period after the policy becomes effective, the insurer may deny or limit their claim for benefits. The specific terms of the pre-existing condition exclusion may vary by policy, but typically, the exclusion applies to conditions for which the insured person received medical treatment, medication, or advice within a specified period before the policy’s effective date.

What Does Pre-Existing Mean?

The pre-existing condition is going to be defined in your policy. For example, a page from an Aetna long-term disability policy says:

No benefit is payable for any disability that is caused by or substantially contributed to by a pre-existing condition or medical or surgical treatment of a pre-existing condition and starts before the end of the first 12 months following your effective date of coverage. A disease or injury is pre-existing if, during the three months right before your effective date of coverage, it was diagnosed. Or you received medical treatment, care, or services for the disease or injury. Or you took drugs or medicines prescribed or recommended by a physician for the disease or injury.

The best way to come to understand how a pre-existing condition impacts a long-term disability case is to perhaps use an analogy to a different kind of case: health insurance

Let’s say someone was just diagnosed with cancer, but they do not have health insurance. They now realize the importance of health insurance and that it would have been nice to have health insurance to get all the treatment that’s required for that type of serious condition. However, if someone has cancer and they go out to try to buy a new health insurance policy, very few insurance companies are going to want to underwrite that.

So they’re either going to deny coverage, saying that we’re not going to cover you for cancer, or they’re going write a policy saying that we’re going to cover you for every type of medical condition except for cancer. So, they exclude it as a pre-existing condition.

The same type of concept applies to a long-term disability claim. They don’t want to cover you for something you’ve been getting treatment for if you go out on disability within a year of starting your job. So that’s where it says if it begins before the end of the first 12 months following your effective date of coverage, it is a pre-existing condition.

Example 1: Herniated Disc as a Result of a Car Accident

So, let’s use an example from the long-term disability world. Let’s say that someone started working on January 1, 2017. And they’re going along, working great for a few months. Then, on April 1, 2017, they had to stop work due to a back pain problem. They were in a car wreck, they suffered herniated discs in their back, and they’re no longer able to go back to work because of their disc herniations and their pain, and the recovery goes along with that. They were only at work for about three or four months before leaving, so they would be subject to the pre-existing condition exclusion since the disability arose within the first 12 months of their employment.

The insurance company will look at what happened during the three months before the date the insurance took effect. So, in this case, they will look at October, November, and December of 2016 to see if that person received any treatment for that condition in those three months. They would not be covered if they received treatment for a back pain condition in October, November, or December of 2016.

In our example, the person was in a car wreck, so they probably weren’t getting treatment for a back condition. It can be shown that their condition is related to that accident, which did not occur during the pre-existing lookback period. There probably would be coverage for the condition in that instance because it’s not a pre-existing condition. It’s a condition that arose after the coverage took effect.

Example 2: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD)

Let’s change the circumstances a little bit. This time, the claimant didn’t go out because of a back pain problem; let’s say that they went out because of a breathing disorder. They have severe COPD, and it’s gotten to the point where they have extreme difficulty breathing, extreme difficulty doing activities of daily living, and difficulty doing work activities.

Again, this occurred only after three or four months on the job, and now the insurance company will do the same pre-existing evaluation. In this example, the claimant received treatment on November 15, 2016. They went to see a pulmonologist because of their breathing problems. It wasn’t as bad as when they ultimately went out of work, but they still had breathing problems and were seeing a lung doctor.

In that instance, the insurance company will likely deny the claim because they will say you stopped working within one year and got treatment for that breathing problem three months before the coverage took effect. Therefore, because it’s the same condition, a breathing problem, a lung problem, we won’t cover you for LTD benefits.

Some pre-existing conditions are relatively clear-cut, such as in my two examples above. However, things can get a little bit more complicated when there does seem to be maybe some overlapping symptoms between what the patient got treatment for and what they ultimately stopped working for:

Example 3: High Blood Pressure v. Heart Attack

Suppose our hypothetical person left work in April 2017 due to a heart attack. The insurance company gets all the medical records, and they go back to October, November, and December 2016 to see if the person was getting any treatment for a heart problem and found that the person was taking blood pressure medication for high blood pressure.

The insurance company is going to argue that this treatment was related to a heart condition or that the individual took drugs or medicines prescribed or recommended by a physician for treatment of that type of condition, and they may deny the claim because you were experiencing blood pressure problems during the lookback period.

In that type of case, we’ve argued that there’s a distinction between high blood pressure and ultimately stopping work due to a heart attack. The insurance company should pay benefits because high blood pressure and a heart attack are not the same condition. They stopped working because of a new and materially different condition. You’ll need to identify either a disabling condition you did not get treatment for during the lookback period or that your condition is so materially different from what you received treatment for during the lookback period that you should still be entitled to benefits. That’s where things can get a little bit tricky.

Appeal a Disability Insurance Claim Denial Due to a Pre-Existing Condition

If you’ve been denied benefits under the pre-existing condition exclusion, you should talk to an experienced attorney about your legal rights. 

Nick Ortiz and the experienced legal team at Ortiz Law Firm have successfully appealed numerous claims involving pre-existing condition exclusions. For example, we’ve handled claims where:

• The claimant had treatment for a “pre-existing condition,” but the treatment was remote, and the claimant did not receive treatment or otherwise exhibit symptoms during the relevant “look back period.”
• The insurance company applied the pre-existing condition exclusion, and we proved that the claimant qualified for benefits due to other non-pre-existing conditions. 
• The insurance company applied the pre-existing condition exclusion, and we proved that the condition was not pre-existing.

In these circumstances, the appeals we submitted to the insurance company compelled it to overturn the denial and pay benefits. We encourage you to contact us online or at (888) 321-8131 to schedule your free case evaluation so we can discuss how we can help you get the benefits you deserve. We look forward to hearing from you!