Private Disability Insurance
Recognizing that the odds of becoming totally or partially disabled during one's work life are fairly high, many far-sighted employers and even a few individuals carry long-term disability insurance. Those policies have proved to be a godsend to many of us with hearing loss.
The general thrust of disability insurance is that it replaces a portion of your income if your physical condition materially interferes with your ability to earn a living. While those policies have many variations, and there may be exceptions to every generality, most of them do cover hearing loss. And unlike Social Security, many of the private policies insure against the inability to do your own pre-disability work -- the fact that you can do other work may not prevent you from receiving benefits.
The cause of the loss is generally not significant -- coverage would exist if the hearing loss was caused naturally rather than through workplace noise or accident. And while a sudden hearing loss is most often the trigger for coverage, many policies are written in such a way that a change in workplace standards could trigger coverage even without a change in the individual's hearing.
What is generally involved in a disability insurance claim is medical determination that the condition exists, followed by a demonstration as to why the condition prevents the claimant from working at pre-disability levels.
Under Washington law, an insurer who unreasonably denies a claim is liable for attorneys' fees, and may be liable for as much as three times the benefits due. While that statute exempts health-insurance policies, it DOES NOT exempt disability-benefit policies.
A fairly recent article in the New York Times said that some disability insurers are demanding that a claimant first apply for Social Security disability benefits, even in situations where the disability insurer knows that the applicant won't receive them. Because the threshhold for receiving Social Security benefits based on hearing loss is so high, as discussed in the entry involving Social Security, we would suspect that in most instances, any insurer who required such a filing would simply be trying to delay payment, in which case, a claim for recovery of attorneys' fees would seem quite strong, and a claim for enhanced damages would be credible.
