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.