Manulife Disability Insurance Reviews

In 2010 I had to leave work due to serious health issues. Manulife provides the group health insurance provided by my employer. The application was correct and accurate. I received benefits for the first 4 years, after which a return to work is deemed unsuitable and they are obliged to provide benefits until the claimant is 65. They required testing at this 4 year mark by their own selected health expert and his report *supported* my claim. Despite this, I received a letter saying my benefits were being terminated as I was (miraculously) fit to return immediately to full time employment at my former job. There was no medical evidence to support this decision, quite the opposite. Further, the policy included a clause that claimants do not have to take employment that pays less than 75% of their former salary; all medical reports indicated that the type of work I could now perform without risk of triggering another episode of serious illness did not pay anywhere near 75% of my former (management) salary. The Manulife employee assigned to my file refused to acknowledge the existence of this clause in the policy. Another Manulife employee involved in the file was caught out saying one thing to me and another thing to my medical care provider in an effort to use semantics to cheat me out of my benefits. In short, he lied through his teeth. It was shocking. I had to hire a lawyer to fight their decision to cancel as it was clear anything I pointed out in my defence was being ignored. The lawyer indicated the run-around she was getting from them as she prepared the file was just short of bad faith bargaining. In the end, the unjustified cancellation was reversed - but not before I had to pay over $5,000 I couldn't afford to the lawyer (who basically made the same arguments I had) and had gone through months of intense stress that in and of itself made me more ill. If I had been unable to afford a lawyer, I would have lost my benefits, plain and simple. The truth played no part in it. I have read that disability insurers routinely cancel valid claimants as some of them will not know how to or have the stamina to fight back, and for those who do, it's much cheaper for the insurance provider to deal with an internal review of the termination decision or a court case than pay out substantial benefits to someone in their 30s or 40s 'til age 65. So is Manulife worse than other disability providers? I don't know. I wouldn't trust any of them after my experience.

Was an RN working with teens in psych
-after filling out all required paperwork, I submitted before my mandatory disability ran out with the understanding that I would have piece of mind and begin picking up the pieces.
-a letter comes back a week after LTD deposit expected
-meet with your case worker over the phone (lets call her Poozan F.)
-First, the woman is on VACATION for a week
-I get her on the phone, she appears to be doing 5 other things while half listening to me on speaker phone
-I give her the same information my doctor and I had filled out.
-Another week passes, this woman calls me and starts asking me additional questions, to which I answer...no problem.
-this woman sends...get this...medical review to be assessed by a psychiatrist...addresses it to my gp
-I was never emailed these forms, doc had to copy for me
-because I am now weeks without an income, my anxiety increases, I have to borrow from all over, credit ruined, motorcycle on the way out
-I make a plea to Poozan's manager, who is equally useless, says they need my GP to fill out psych-specific paperwork for my claim
- I have a nervous breakdown, vomit, headache, catatonically depressed for 2 days
-my psych doctor doesn't fill the paperwork because it's not adressed to him
-Finally convince my gp to help me fill the paperwork, much to her frustration and we send it ALL
-Ive not had an income for a month and a half at this point, and resorted to pleading with these corporate, soulless, automatons
-"we understand your frustration{because it is our job to}, but we can't do anything about it {because our job is to make money - not concern ourselves with human impact}
-I can no longer pay for my antidepressants
-two weeks go by not hearing a damn thing
-call the manager, who tells me something about rush being put on it {if that is rush in 2016, we are in trouble] and says her underling Poozan will fill me in tomorrow
-CLAIM denied?
-Why? Because we actually sent your psych doc the paperwork, but because we failed to notify you, there was no reason for a doc who sees hundreds of patients a week to fill out forms without context.
-Why? because after sending your entire medical chart to us, there was a mention of past use of marijuana, Poozan kept asking me if it was addiction, and I said no, I am abstinent cause Im BROKE
-that didn't stop addiction being reason number two
-so Poozan gave me her corporate script after I yet again tried to deliver some human context in their system of manufactured delay
-surely I couldn't be the only one?

Apparently Manulife, Sun Life, DesJardin or any insurance company that has a high end solidified deal with a large corporation has no incentive to please it's individual members, and being a business, manufactured delay is more money quarterly, creates more time for more reasons for claims to be denied, and when all of this fails, evidenced instances of folk not getting what they are entitled to by appeal 3.

- my nursing flame has all but been extinguished by first the americanization of our beloved health system, second by an ambitious wolf paid to guard the veteran sheep of the unit, and an insurance company that delays you into ruined credit, loss of possessions, or in my case, having to move to a cheaper unit.

Manulife MANUFACTURES delay, to make YOU do all the paperwork and put together the appointments, because the creatures that work there earn their bonuses of the BACKS of nurses, who had no choice in which coverage their hospital subscribes to.

Manulife employees, you are the scourge of the earth and the opposite of what humanity is as understood in the art of nursing. May you never need to ironically use your own services in a time of need.

-with the last of my nursing flame, my best advice is to keep yourself healthy, and never subject yourself to this system unless absolutely necessary.

peace