Long Term Disability Carrier Tries to Intimidate Treating Physician

Unfortunately it is not uncommon for long term disability carriers to try to intimidate your doctor by sending a letter to your treating doctor without a copy to you, telling your doctor that if they don’t agree with the long term disability carriers assessment or comment they will simply adopt the peer review doctors opinion. What they say “if we don’t hear from you, we will presume that you are in agreement with the findings of the review.”

If you’ve never sent a copy of this inquiry, you will never know what’s going on. And if you doctor doesn’t reply, you potentially can be denied long term disability benefits. It’s a trap that long term disability carriers such as MetLife engage in all the time. In fact, they got slapped big time by the court in Saffron vs. Wells Fargo & Company (LTD Plan 522 f3dH63 (9th Circuit 2008)) just for this kind of behavior.