California Long Term Disability Bad Faith Law – A Fair Deal for Policyholders

So what do you really think. Ray Bourhis?

If an insurance company defrauds or cheats a policyholder out of the benefits the policyholder is owed, and if, as a result, the policyholder his or her home or their life savings, or is forced to hire a lawyer to obtain the benefits they are owed, the insurance company should be responsible for reimbursing its insured for the losses they suffered as a result of the wrongful claims denial.

Is that a radical idea? Is there something crazy about the notion that a wrongdoer be responsible for paying for the damages it inflicted on an innocent victim? Is there some sinister scheme behind that concept?

No. It’s not. It’s basic common sense, basic decency, basic public policy.

That is why “bad faith” remedies are the law in states where elected officials have protected their residents from fraudulent and unfair claims denials. That is why those states have rejected efforts by insurance industry lobbyists to bribe them into submission, immunizing insurance companies from even the most outrageous wrongdoing. Such as denying a covered claim for chemotherapy; or rejecting a disability claim by a surgeon with arthritis.

So what is the alternative to providing bad faith remedies to policyholders?

In plain English, it’s to immunize grand larceny if it’s committed by an insurance company!

It’s to give a green light to even the most malicious, fraudulent, oppressive conduct imaginable. Conduct perpetrated to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from policyholders who have lost their homes, their health and their livelihoods.

So, what’s wrong with states like New York and Massachusetts? Illinois and Texas. Minnesota and Wisconsin? Are their legislatures places where cowards write the laws? Or are they just too busy stuffing their pockets with blood money from white collar crooks in home office skyscrapers?

Are the legislators the problem? Or are the voters the ones that deserve the blame?