Four Strategies for Winning Your Bronchiectasis Insurance Claim

Bronchiectasis is a long-term condition that occurs when the tubes that carry air in and out of your lungs – the airways – get damaged and become widened, leading to a build-up of excess mucus that can make the lungs more vulnerable to infection. Bronchiectasis usually results from an infection or other condition that injures the walls of your airways, leading to repeated flare-ups from serious lung infections.

Symptoms include a daily cough that occurs over months or years and daily production of large amounts of phlegm, as well as wheezing, shortness of breath, chest pain and chronic fatigue. complications often result in pneumonia, lung abscess, empyema, septicemia, cor pulmonale, respiratory failure, secondary amyloidosis with nephrotic syndrome, and recurrent pleurisy. Unfortunately, bronchiectasis has no cure, making it harder to work and earn a living.

An Important Fact

Before we get into each of the four strategies, you need to know this: Just because you have bronchiectasis does not get you long-term disability benefits. Proving you cannot work is how you increase your likelihood of getting approved for long-term disability benefits for your bronchiectasis.

Your best chance at getting the long-term disability benefits you need includes pulling together the strongest evidence of how having bronchiectasis has specifically affected your ability to work. That’s why it’s important to carefully review the requirements of your specific long-term disability policy or program to ensure you meet all the necessary criteria.

We can review your long-term benefits policy or program to ensure you meet the criteria.

 

The 4 strategies that Tucker Disability Law uses to help win your bronchiectasis disability insurance claim. They are:

Strategy 1:

Keep a daily journal to detail what you are feeling and how and when you are limited. This is the best way to give your physician specific instances of how your condition prevents you from being able to work and perform even the most routine tasks.

• This is the best way to give your physician specific instances of how your condition prevents you from being able to work and perform even the most routine tasks.
• Note every time you had to stop working due to wheezing, shortness of breath, chest pain, chronic fatigue or other symptoms.
• When you are reacting and suffering from the disease, have co-workers, family, and friends take a video of you. Note the date, time and place of each incident.
• We’ve developed a journal that helps you provide details about the severity and duration of your chronic bronchiectasis symptoms and any limitations or restrictions it imposes on your ability to perform your job.

The more you document, the greater your chance of qualifying. Click here or use the yellow box to the right to get my “Proven-to-Work” Capability Journal now.

Strategy 2:

Make sure to see your pulmonologist/lung specialist and primary care doctor on a regular basis.

• Up-to-date medical documentation and evidence supporting your bronchiectasis condition are vital to support your claim for long-term disability due to bronchiectasis. This is work that you must do and is critical to the success of your claim. Remember, your insurance company is not your friend. They do not want to pay disability benefits. You must overwhelm them with evidence.
• Your pulmonologist/lung specialist and primary care doctor need to know how your chronic bronchiectasis symptoms affect your everyday life, how they may change from time to time, and any side effects of your treatments and medications. The more evidence you show to your doctors, the more likely they are to take you seriously.

My Capability Journal will help your doctor understand your physical and mental limitations. Start journaling today.

Strategy 3:

Let your family and friends know about your condition and its symptoms to understand why you can’t work.

• Although you may want to keep your health issues private, this is critical, since insurance companies often ask those close to you about your symptoms and how they affect you.
• These same people can be the best witnesses in a disability claim. Give your friends and family copies of my journal, and ask them to journal your limitations.
• Have them take pictures or videos of you struggling. A picture is worth 1,000 words. A video is worth a million words.

Strategy 4:

You have no chance of getting a claim approved without a doctor signed Attending Physician Statement Form (APS).

• Not having this form completed, or not completed in its entirety, could delay approval of your claim or even result in your claim being denied.
• In other words, having a doctor willing to advocate for you by completing disability paperwork can mean the difference between a swift disability benefit approval and a lengthy legal disability battle.
• Your insurer uses the APS form to assess whether, based on the restrictions supported by your doctor, you can perform the material duties required by your own job, or any job for which you are reasonably qualified.

Getting a doctor to fill out and sign your disability form is a must-have to qualify for long-term benefits for your chronic bronchiectasis.

But here is where the insurance companies rig the system or stack the odds against you.

The rigging starts with the Attending Physician Statement form. The form provided by the insurance company is “one size fits all” and is not specifically for someone who has bronchiectasis.

As a result, the form makes it impossible for a doctor to detail your limitations caused by bronchiectasis.

Here’s the Insurance Company’s biggest trick:

Their Attending Physician Statement form does not ask the right diagnostic questions, meaning the questions the insurance company doesn’t want the doctor to answer. Insurance companies only ask the questions they want answered, but those aren’t the questions that help you win your claim.

NOTE:

Despite the APS form being central to your STDI/LTDI claim, doctors are not required to complete disability paperwork and sometimes a doctor declines to do so.

If this happens, certain information and strategies may help you secure the necessary medical support for your disability claim. We have a guide specifically addressing ways to get your doctor to complete and sign your APS form. Click here to get it.

Tucker Disability Law can help assist you by offering a FREE Capability Journal that you can download immediately. This journal, created by our experienced disability attorneys and complete with easy-to-follow instructions, is a proven asset to help you gather the evidence needed to win your disability case. Use this journal on a regular basis and bring it with you to your doctor’s visits so your provider can see how your symptoms limit your ability to work.

How Tucker Disability Law Can Help

Here’s the reality.

The burden of proof in long-term disability cases is on you. And the truth is, insurance companies don’t want to pay the claims. Furthermore, the doctors they may send you to are on the insurance company’s side, not yours.

That’s why fighting the insurance companies on your own is not easy, if not impossible. In fact, going it alone has an extremely high fail rate, estimated to be as high as 98%!

However, if you’re struggling to make a living and overwhelmed by the physical limitations, difficulties, and anxiety associated with your financial burdens as a result of bronchiectasis, Tucker Disability Law is ready to fight for you.

We have a team of highly qualified physicians and healthcare professionals ready to look out for YOUR best interests.

If you’ve been denied or cut off from your long-term disability benefits related to bronchiectasis, we go to battle with the big insurance companies on a daily basis, and unlike some of those other firms, we don’t settle for pennies on the dollar.

The only way to fast-track your claim is to have all your ducks in a row.

We offer a three-step success plan:

Most of our cases are contingency, meaning you pay ZERO if we don’t win your case. Unlike the very high failure rate of claimants who go it alone, we have a 98% success rate for our clients.

At the end of the day, Tucker Disability Law doesn’t settle for less. Neither should you. We’ll fight for your benefits so you’ll have the income to help pay for your medical care and regular living expenses. After all, that is why you had disability insurance to begin with – to pay your bills.

Schedule your free consultation now and put our team of disability experts to work for you today.

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