Prudential insurance Short-term disability is only for the rich or the extremely sick, for all others it's a ripoff Newark NJ

I'll cut right to the ending of the story. Here's how short-term disability works. The company denies your claim in nearly every case regardless of the evidence but tells you of your right to appeal. However, the appeal can take up to 90 days, which is the maximum length of short-term disability anyway. Unless you are rich, you can't live without a paycheck for three months, which is the best case scenario because they will likely deny your appeal anyway, in which case you lose the income forever. But if you go back to work, even if pain, even at the expense of your health, they deny your appeal outright.

So the bottom line is this: STD is useless to all but the rich who don't need the money anyway or to people who are so sick that they can't work no matter what. like people with ALS. These are a small fraction of the total cases.

But that's not how they sell the policies. They give you the impression, and your HR department will do this as well, that you are buying into some kind of humane, medically progressive insurance plan that will be there for your medical needs. You are picturing Sweden. But what you get is aggravation, run-around, lies, and loss of income. They give you the impression that everybody needs a STD plan and that everybody will benefit from one. In truth, the plans benefit the insurance companies who get rich taking in premiums from millions of people and paying out money to only a few.

Long-term disability is just as bad. They'll give you stats like half of people will go on disability in their lifetimes. But the parameters for defining that half are different than the ones used for payout. For payout, you need to be so sick that you need home care. A small fraction of people ever need that. What most people may need is a few weeks or months at home, taking care of themselves. They are well enough to be at home, but not enough to work. So they receive nothing. You might pay out $20,000 over 20 years for these policies and never collect a dime, even after being disabled.

All of these plans work only for the rich and people who are extremely sick. And the chances are that neither applies to you. I am going through the STD nightmare with Prudential and the LTD nightmare with UNUM.