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Playing devil's advocate, why would I as an insurance company want to insure you if I don't have access to your medical records to verify preexisting conditions
by kop316 7y ago
Playing devil's advocate, why would I as an insurance company want to insure you if I don't have access to your medical records to verify preexisting conditions?
I say that because then a person could have a preexisting condition, sign up for insurance, then go on long term disability due to the preexisting condition.
- bb88 7y agoNAL, but isn't that insurance fraud?
- kop316 7y agoIt definitely is, but I imagine that doesn't stop dishonest people.
- ken 7y agoJust because a company has a financial interest in learning a piece of information doesn't make it legal to acquire that information in any possible way. Pasting a signature onto a different document sounds like a clear cut case of fraud.
- kop316 7y agoI'm not disagreeing that the method is shady. I'm saying if I'm the insurance company, why would I offer disability insurance if I can't verify the existence or absence of a preexisting? condition
- whatisthiseven 7y agoThe answer is the insurance company wouldn't. Easy. Why are you asking, though? Companies shouldn't commit fraud just because they want something.
- kop316 7y agoI'm asking because I'm only hearing one side of the story. I have had to E-sign documents before and they always say the documents are available to reading, to which I always ask for it. I've never had an issue with that, especially with insurance companies. Furthermore, the insurance the person is asking for is disability insurance. Common sense dictates that they will ask for medical records, and therefore need a HIPAA disclosure document. If what the poster alleges it true, I agree wholeheartly that it should have been more clear in signing up for it, but it seems odd that the poster didn't think that state farm would ask for medical release forms for disability insurance. TL;DR, I think there's more to the story than what is alleged here.
- whatisthiseven 7y agoBut why not state that rather than question begging? To everyone else, it seemed you were hammering away at some important point but without any context. Honestly, though, so many ads for insurance say you don't need a doctor visit, or health checkup, or whatever. I could easily see customers getting confused thinking they wouldn't need to give over health documents because the ads are deliberately misleading. Just because a business's practice is obvious to itself and those in the know, doesn't mean customers can get fleeced because "they should have known better". Caveat Emptor is kind of bullshit with such high information asymmetry.
- kop316 7y agoI was trying to be nice to the poster. Being blunt, I think the poster has no idea how insurance works, and didn't bother to read anything while signing up. Now they are upset because they actually read it. Or being less charitable, they did understand the process, and wanted to create fake outrage about it. You don't have to "be in the know" to get how insurance works. Nor to understand that an insurance company will want to do it's fact checking on someone as a condition to insure them.
- qtplatypus 7y ago
- matz1 7y agoIf you are insurance company you should want it. If you are customer you shouldn't want it. Every party can have different interest and should fight for their own interest.
- kop316 7y agoIf I'm an insurance company, I wouldn't provide coverage without it.
- mijoharas 7y agoIf I'm an insurance company, it would be best for my bottom line to not pay anyone that got sick and immediately terminate their "insurance". Literally the only thing that is stopping insurance companies from doing that is a contract, so if an insurance company is forging consent for a contract, that should be somewhat worrying. The insurance company is well within their right to not provide coverage without that consent. They are not within their right to forge that consent, which is the issue here.