How Defective is CIGNA in Handling Claims?

As a family, we were not willing to go into a prolonged legal battle with CIGNA, as our attorney said CIGNA would make that battle as ugly and dirty as possible.  We have children and we were not willing to expose them to their tactics--see below--they are dirty.  But that was then.

What did my husband do?  He went back to work in the midst of a horrible exacerbation of Multiple Sclerosis, faced with uncertainty over his health and while in the middle of chemotherapy. 

There are others like us out there, but ones who went on to fight.  The following is taken from an attorney's site here, and it's also about CIGNA attempting, once again, to deny benefits to a person with Multiple Sclerosis:

A Minnesota judge just ruled that CIGNA’s evaluation of a long term disability (“LTD”) claim was “biased.” In McNally v. CIGNA, 2009 WL 1458275 (D. Minn. May 26, 2009), CIGNA terminated the LTD benefits of a claimant with Multiple Sclerosis (“MS”), a progressive neurological disorder. The court found that CIGNA’s handling of the claim was so defective that it could only have resulted from “either bias or incompetence,” and concluded the former was the reason.

The court highlighted that CIGNA improperly relied on the opinion of Dr. John Mendez, its in-house internal/occupational medicine physician, because he “obviously lacks the necessary familiarity or training with the nature of fatigue and multiple sclerosis”. The court ruled that CIGNA “had little reason to disregard the opinions of McNally’s treating neurologist in favor of Mendez’ opinion.”

Besides reliance on the Mendez opinion, the court held that CIGNA’s “bias is apparent from other evidence as well.” However, I want to point out that CIGNA knew its reliance on Mendez was improper because it was chastised for doing the same in 2009 WL 222351 (S.D.N.Y. Jan 30, 2009).

Amazing, huh?  “obviously lacks the necessary familiarity or training with the nature of fatigue and multiple sclerosis”. The court ruled that CIGNA “had little reason to disregard the opinions of McNally’s treating neurologist in favor of Mendez’ opinion.” This is exactly what happened to us!  See all documents from CIGNA to the right.

As for dirty tactics?  See the Transferable Skills Analysis Scam website here.
- Gardner v Bear Creek and Cigna (LINA) - Judge reinstates benefits with interest.  This case is another case involving Cigna and Photofax Inc.  These investigations on behalf of Cigna appear to be very invasive.  Peering in windows.

And,

•  Knowingly applying the wrong legal definition of disability when denying claims
•  Purposely targeting high-cost claims for denials 
• Misuse of claimants' medical records