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STD insurance

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crazy-boss

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Mississippi

In the fall, my employer offered the employees a cafeteria plan of supplemental insurance. Because I did not have any benefits or paid time off of any kind, I chose a STD policy to cover the "what ifs."

This week, I received something in the mail from the insurance policy stating that my payments are four months past due and I will no longer carry the policy if payment is not received for the past due amount by the end of the month.

My employer has been taking money from my paycheck to pay for this policy every pay period since I enrolled for the policy.

Is there any way that this is supposed to be right? I'm confused.
 


FlyingRon

Senior Member
Nope, it's not right. You should rattle the cage with your employer. If the coverage is important to you, you may need to make a payment now to keep it on your own and then fight with your employer to make things right.

If you have regular sick leave accrual, short term disability (I assume we're talking about this rather than some odd sexually transmitted disease coverage), usually isn't necessary. Usually an STD policy is used (and provided by the employer) when sick leave isn't provided (usually you get a few "personal" days to bridge between the gap before the STD kicks in).
 

crazy-boss

Junior Member
I get no sick leave. My co-workers say this has happened before and the employer never repaid the debt. What kind of action can we take collectively if this repeats?
 

xylene

Senior Member
Your employer is committing insurance fraud.

Contact:

http://www.mid.ms.gov

and

http://www.ago.state.ms.us
 

DaisyPHR

Junior Member
This could be either an issue with the employer or the insurance company. In my most recent former life, I was the benefits administrator and one of our insurance vendors had SERIOUS billing issues. I was working with my representative at the insurance company to try and get their screw ups (and there were MANY) fixed as our invoices (for 600+ employees) were 90% wrong. As a result, our employees started receiving letters like what you are referencing. I went into damage control mode; I had been working behind the scenes to get this fixed so that employees would not know how bad the vendor had screwed up and lose confidence in them, but I ended up having to send an All-Staff email with a summary of the issues as well as directives from my insurance representative to ignore those letters as it was an internal glitch within the system and assurance that it was being worked on and corrected. (Unfortunately, I ended up having to send these communications 3 times because the vendor's issues continued.)

Although my representative was great and took on my frustration as her own, I don't think I will ever willingly use that vendor again. I was also informed by her and my insurance brokers this was a wide-spread problem and my company was not the only one experiencing their ineptitude.

I would definitely start with your employer; send a copy of the letter to your HR department and ask them to look into it (also remind them YOU have been paying your premiums and need to make sure the money has been applied correctly.) If they haven't been paying the bills (i.e., if they side-step around your questions) call the insurance company. You should also have been given contact information for the insurance broker and you could also enlist their assistance in straightening this out.
 

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