Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Aflac!

I sat through an Aflac presentation at work a few years ago. It is not medical insurance per se, but it does pay money for you to pay bills & such while you are unable to work, due to illness.
After the 1/2 hour presentation where they talked about the different tiers of coverage you can buy, they abruptly announced, by the way, we
flat out do not cover anyone with a health history/diagnosis of heart disease or diabetes.
They have the (depending on your perspective) cutesy/annoying commercial with the Duck quacking away the word AFLAC!!!! so people wondering aloud about how to cover bills when sick could hear the answer. Imagine if they had to have truth in advertising about their "blanket" policy.... Bold, all caps print:
WE DON'T COVER DIABETICS OR PEOPLE W HEART DISEASE.

How would they make that statement into a snappy jingle?

They are coming to do another presentation next month. I'm curious to know if the new health care reform applies to this kind of "insurer". That would be great if they could not pick & choose who they would cover- because that was sure a blatant pre existing condition exclusion if ever there was one. Looking forward to seeing what the duck is going on with Aflac!


2 comments:

D.K. Raed said...

I haven't read anything about HCR that would apply to disability policies like AFLAC is selling.

They aren't the only game in town though. Just google disability insurance if you're interested.

We used Guardian Ins for that type of policy when we had our own biz.
Where they get you is if there is any way they can enforce the "co-negligent" clause. Oh and you have to exhaust any worker's compensation coverage first.

Bottom line, read all the fineprint. But you're right, they should be more upfront about whole classes of people they absolutely will not cover.

AFLAC = always finding loopholes about coverage?

Fran said...

The Acronym you posted makes sense.

Still I signed up for their presentation- any time not actually working is good, and I can ask my question in the end after they mention the 2 pre existing conditions they just exclude wholesale.