Californians Should Be Concerned About Their Disability Insurance
According to Michael Kiltzik of the LA TIMES, anyone who lives in California should start worrying about their disability insurance protection. Steve Poizner, a successful businessman and Insurance Commissioner of California, wants to roll back regulations that reduce disability insurance benefit payments to offset payments that the claimant receives from pensions, workers compensation payments or wages. While offsets are business as usual when it comes to Social Security disability claims, why should Californians - or anyone, for that matter - who worked hard to earn a pension have that money offset against their benefits?Poizner is taking the position that insurance regulations already in place will prevent this - but these are the regulations that protect Californians from the insurance companies' chronic policies of denying and delaying and offsetting whatever is possible. Poizner has set his sights on a Republican nomination for governor next year, and many are questioning this and other decisions where his chief constituency appears to be the insurance companies, not the good people of California who he has been entrusted to protect.
