I get what you're saying, but it's irrelevant, and draws attention away from the crime being committed.
However, my experience with those "payments" is closer to "I have read the contract, agree to terms, etc." I am given the oppritunity to see the contract to review before I sign it, and walk out with it signed.
Also, my point is common sense tells me that state farm would want to see my medical records to make sure I am not lying about previous disabilities (we are talking about disability insurance, not car or renters insurance), and usually you sign a contract for insurance.
From a flow standpoint, I can see why state farm would only do one signature if it is all digital versus making the person sign five times, when all it says is "I have reviewed form X and agree." But if someone doesn't actually review all of the documents, then something like this happens.
There aren't two sides to every story, and this appears to be a case where there is only one side to the story.
Do you think that anything you've said justifies State Farm forging signatures to fake consent to violate clients' privacy? If not, why are you polluting the conversation with irrelevant information?
Being blunt, I think the poster has no idea how insurance works, and didn't bother to read anything while signing up. Now they are upset because they actually read it.
Or being less charitable, they did understand the process, and wanted to create fake outrage about it.
But the story does not add up to me at all taken at face value.
I don't see much reason to disbelieve what the poster said, given this is just a logical next step from sneaky behavior I've already seen lots of companies engage in.
I suggest you try that sometime. I find life to be much better when I just don't go accusing people of bad intentions like you just did to me.
Is that what you think you were doing when you said,
> Being blunt, I think the poster has no idea how insurance works, and didn't bother to read anything while signing up. Now they are upset because they actually read it.
> Or being less charitable, they did understand the process, and wanted to create fake outrage about it.
> But the story does not add up to me at all taken at face value.
Let's unpack this gem:
> I suggest you try that sometime. I find life to be much better when I just don't go accusing people of bad intentions like you just did to me.
You realize I was just turning what you said back on you? My point is: it doesn't feel good does it? So maybe don't do that?
You're literally objecting to something you did.
They would be allowed to ask questions about your medical history, but medical records themselves are an absolute no go.
Omitting said conditions would be grounds for non-payment of benefits if what made you unable to work is in any way related to a condition they asked you about and you didn't reveal.
So I can refuse to share that information and then every long term insurance company will refuse to issue coverage.
It’s not allowed for insurance companies to pull information without consent.
Of course, just because they have attached your signature to an unseen document will likely still require a legal case to affirm that it was illegal or unethical (probably little to no case law in this area).
I say that because then a person could have a preexisting condition, sign up for insurance, then go on long term disability due to the preexisting condition.
I'm saying if I'm the insurance company, why would I offer disability insurance if I can't verify the existence or absence of a preexisting? condition
Furthermore, the insurance the person is asking for is disability insurance. Common sense dictates that they will ask for medical records, and therefore need a HIPAA disclosure document.
If what the poster alleges it true, I agree wholeheartly that it should have been more clear in signing up for it, but it seems odd that the poster didn't think that state farm would ask for medical release forms for disability insurance.
TL;DR, I think there's more to the story than what is alleged here.
Honestly, though, so many ads for insurance say you don't need a doctor visit, or health checkup, or whatever. I could easily see customers getting confused thinking they wouldn't need to give over health documents because the ads are deliberately misleading.
Just because a business's practice is obvious to itself and those in the know, doesn't mean customers can get fleeced because "they should have known better". Caveat Emptor is kind of bullshit with such high information asymmetry.
Being blunt, I think the poster has no idea how insurance works, and didn't bother to read anything while signing up. Now they are upset because they actually read it.
Or being less charitable, they did understand the process, and wanted to create fake outrage about it. You don't have to "be in the know" to get how insurance works. Nor to understand that an insurance company will want to do it's fact checking on someone as a condition to insure them.
If you are customer you shouldn't want it.
Every party can have different interest and should fight for their own interest.
Literally the only thing that is stopping insurance companies from doing that is a contract, so if an insurance company is forging consent for a contract, that should be somewhat worrying.
The insurance company is well within their right to not provide coverage without that consent. They are not within their right to forge that consent, which is the issue here.
I want a million dollars. Wanting a million dollars is perfectly reasonable, lots of people want a million dollars. It's not reasonable to walk into a bank and cash a check with Bill Gates' forged signature on it.
Which is exactly what State Farm did. That's not shady, it's fraud, and it's very illegal.
The only "shady" thing might be not sending the authorization form he signed with their HIPPA request to show the source of the signature, but revealing he's seeking a long term disability claim could also be a HIPPA violation itself...
Regardless, the form says he authorized state farm to do exactly what they did: request his medical records without further approval from him (otherwise he might have needed to fill out each additional requests manually, which perhaps was an option if he declined this, we don't know)
> the form says he authorized ...
You seem to be repeatedly missing the point: he claims to have never seen nor signed this form. The "signature" is decidedly pixellized. The claim is that the insurance company put his name on this form without showing it to him, which both defeats the point of the form and is a crime (forgery) in the US.