Rejected insurance claims are stressful, and can even be life altering. I know because an accident and the resulting medical bills were both stressful and life altering for me. After years of fighting with insurance companies to cover medical bills that had been pre-approved, I knew that our system for protecting people with insurance was badly broken. I began searching to find an easier way for busy people to avoid the same heartache. The good news is I found the answer. The answer is for people to know how good insurance companies are about paying claims.
I was prompted to blog about this today after reading an article listing the six things people should do to help ensure insurance companies will pay the bills. While the author had the best of intentions and the six things all make sense, this is a perfect example of the problem with insurance: it’s too complicated. People already pay for the coverage they buy, they don’t want to do six more things to make sure the insurer pays.
Combining home, auto, health, life and other forms of coverage, many American families spend more than half-a-million dollars on insurance in their lifetime. Why? To cover the expenses when tragedy strikes. People are not paying their hard-earned money in order to get rejection letters in the mail and for the right to hire an attorney and fight in court.
Somewhere along the way things have gone awry. Instead of paying the bills when tragedy strikes, insurers now pay the bills when the bills are small. This creates goodwill so people like their insurance company and say positive things when a pollster calls and asks questions. What happens when the expenses are large? My case is the perfect example. Three independent insurance companies all rejected paying nearly $100,000 of bills. They rejected the bills because they are focused on financial management as opposed to the customer protection they promise when they sell the insurance policy.
This is a serious problem. Industry data shows that this is a problem that has gotten progressively worse over the last twenty years. Where that leaves us now is with an industry that:
- Is a trillion dollar industry, annually — huge by any standard
- Has record reserves — money in the bank in case of a rainy day
- Is enjoying record profits
- Continues to fund elections and enjoy legislative change that benefits their business
- Has enjoyed exemption from federal anti-trust laws for nearly a century
Who will reign in the incredible power of this industry? From the list above it is clear that legislative and regulatory change has failed the consumer. This means the consumer must take the lead. The good news is that’s now possible in this era of social media.
Insurance is purchased to pay bills, period.
Here at Injured Money we are working to enable a revolution. The revolution is in how people buy insurance. We spent countless man hours perfecting a system that will tell people how good insurance companies are about paying claims. After all, what else matters than if the claim gets paid?
None of us would donate money to a non-profit that pays the money to executives and doesn’t help the people they are supposed to help. We also wouldn’t put our money in a bank that wouldn’t pay it back. Let’s stay true to our values and not buy insurance from companies that keep the money rather than protecting us when tragedy strikes.
To now revolutionize how we shop for insurance we need the information on which companies pay claims so we can do business with those companies. That’s coming, but it wasn’t easy. What we’ve learned in our research is that insurance companies vary dramatically in how well they pay claims based on location. This means there is no single answer to the question of which companies are good or bad. The answer can however be found based on where you live and what type of insurance you are buying.
At Injured Money we’ve researched this issue thoroughly and have developed software to solve the problem. The good news is we’ve cracked the code. We can tell you which insurance companies are good, and most importantly, how good are they where you live compared to your other insurer options.
Together we can drive insurance costs down and protection up. Stay closely tuned to Injured Money. Many exciting events are coming in the near future, all events from which you and your loved one’s will benefit.
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