Insult to Injury

ConclusionCLAIMS GAMES

201

IS THE PROBLEM OF INSURANCE FRAUD AND BAD FAITH LIMITED TO any one insurance carrier or to any particular type of insurance? Unfortunately not. You can hardly pick up your daily newspaper or turn on the evening news without reading some horror story about an insurance company cheating or destroying its own policyholders; a homeowner’s insurance carrier preventing insureds from rebuilding following a firestorm or hurricane by offering only sixty cents on the dollar to settle claims; an HMO refusing to pay for medical care, asserting that needed treatments are “experimental” or “unnecessary”; a life insurer denying payments to a widow based on false assertions that her deceased spouse made “material omissions” on his ...