COMMENT: Below, Judy Morris, M.D., discusses the nature of the so called Independent Medical Examination (IME) to which insureds are submitted by right of law by their insurers. Although, the context seems to be only that of Long Term Disability (LTD) insurance with UNUM, the situation is exactly the same for ALL insureds and ALL insurers. I make this sweeping generalization simply because I have not heard of any serious medical or health claim by anyone that has been treated by any insurer with the responsibility, honesty or care that such matters deserve - BH. Subject: A Concept Some of you seem to be having some difficulty grasping the concept that our cases are ALL similar. There are some law firms that have sued UNUM hundreds of times but claim the cases are not similar enough for a class action or to show a pattern as required for RICO and punitive damages. I beg to differ. It finally occurred to me why UNUM "investigated" my claim AT ALL. They knew they were going to deny my claim, why not just thumb their nose at me and say "We're not paying, sue us." Because, not only did they want to try to establish some controversy BUT they also want to ACTIVELY put PREJUDICIAL information into the file to use against me when I sued. Now it doesn't make any difference where this prejudicial information comes from. In some of your cases, it came from rigged IME's, some of us had phoney phone calls that fabricated statements and attributed them to our doctors, in some cases the results of the surveillance were distorted and prejudicial. No matter what kind of crime pattern you are talking about there are always going to be SOME differences. Even a serial murderer might stab sometimes in the back, sometimes in the front, use different knives and of course the location of the crime would be different. So the details of our personal lives and personal histories are a little different, we are in different states, some of our doctors caught on sooner than others, some of us are owed more money than others. But the similarities here are: 1) Generally our disability is INVISIBLE (CFS, Pain, Brain injury, Mental) 2) Our policies are being fought because they are either own-occ or ERISA 3) They fight harder and lie more when higher dollar amounts are involved But the tactics generally fall into similar areas involving putting fraudulent information into our claims files so that, if we can manage to sue them, they will have this prejudicial information available to try to sway judge and jury. In other words had we known that the sole purpose of UNUM's "investigation" was to find reasons to deny our claims and prejudice our files we would a) not have bought insurance from them, b) not cooperated with their "investigation." The purpose of the credit checks, background checks, medical reports and phone calls to our doctors, surveillance and IME's were NOT to HELP US or to help PAY OUR CLAIMS but were meant to find or invent denial reasons, harass and intimidate us, make us spend our savings, and get prejudicial information into the records. UNUM actually has special divisions set up for this purpose. I think they go by names like (they change the name periodically to confuse things) Special Investigations Unit (SIU), Complex Claims Unit, Anti-Fraud Unit, all in the Portland Maine Home Office, etc. If your case is being handled by any of these divisions it is because they are setting you up to deny your claim and fill your file with prejudicial and sometimes outright libelous information to be used against you if you manage to sue them. This is extortion. And don't forget, I don't think I've talked to a single person who has not had trouble with UNUM "not receiving" things that were sent to them in the mail or UNUM claiming they had sent things that were never received by us or our doctors. I've heard of faxes being "not recieved", taped phone conversations mysteriously erased, an always things that were critical to the claimant's side, like their doctor's medical reports and conversations. So it really doesn't matter what the disease/disability is, sex of person, age, financial amount, etc. If the claims file is full of lies, half-truths and distortions, THAT IS THE PATTERN. That's all I have to say for now. Judy Morris, MD (Judydoc) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- From judydoc@the-spa.comTue Jul 14 15:22:21 1998 Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 08:30:32 -0400 From: judy morris To: "William C. Hammel" Subject: Of Course you can William C. Hammel wrote: > > Hi Judy, > > May I put this letter in my antiinsurance arsenal? > > -- Bill Sure. I don't know why it took me so long to come up with the pattern but I was reading some testimony from one of UNUM's claims adjusters in a suit brought by a lawyer with severe back pain in California. And she and her slimebag lawyer from UNUM were trying to make it sound suspicious that the lawyer claimant refused to carry malpractice insurance (that somehow that implied that this claimant didn't take her responsibilities seriously). Then they egged this woman on, as they do with most of us, until she are cursed at them. Then the adjuster proclaims she has never been spoken to in such a fashion and how outraged SHE (the adjuster) is that this claimant would talk to her like that when all she's doing is trying to pay her claim. It's a smear campaign. As soon as you have that first conversation with them they are distorting things and putting negative spins on what you say and leaving out important details that support your claim. Then they try to say that this is what made them suspicious and so they can justify the rest of their obnoxious campaign like the credit checks, surveillance, etc. Judy Morris, MD (Judydoc)