Financial Impact of BC on Small Business

Thanks for your reply :-)  I am extremely pleased that you have come out the other side.  Similarly through family support we have managed to claw our way out of it - we were very close to having our farm sold and company liquidated!!   Does certainly put a different perspective on things though!

I have been reflecting on the whole situation since I put my first blog post up - I had sickness & accident insurance which was $400 per week. When I put in my claim, I claimed total disability for a certain amount of time and then "made the mistake" of saying that I could answer the phone to take orders from customers (maybe 1 a day). The insurance company rang me and mentioned that they didn't pay on partial disablement (which I was totally unaware) and that it only covered total disability but that they were happy for me to go back to my specialist and review the claim.  When I did and resubmitted it, even though my specialist had provided new dates for total disability, they rejected it on the basis that I had originally said that I could answer the phone. Even though I could do nothing else in our business such as drive the ute, tractor etc because I was able to do something the rest of it didn't count.  I had also delegated financial aspects to our accountant & financial advisor as mentally I was unable to deal with it, the insurance company's response was that I needed to have seen a psychologist at the time to be able to claim for any mental stress - was too stressed dealing with the surgeries etc to do that!! :-(    

Unfortunately I did not challenge the rejection of the claim as it was just too much to cope with - I really should have though!!

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but it has certainly given me plenty of insights into how to deal with insurance companies in the future - unfortunately my husband tore his bicep last year and was incapacitated farm wise for nearly 6 months - we certainly made sure the claim was totally correct but it still had a huge financial impact. Just to top it off, he was assaulted in May this year and sustained a fractured top jaw, eye socket and cheek - which meant he was out of action for nearly 8 weeks (we must have been extremely wicked in our past lives!!!) 

Certainly the financial aspects of any illness is a huge factor and one that causes in lots of cases, more stress that the illness itself.

My main tip for anyone is make sure you have adequate insurance cover, read the fine print of your insurance policies (our agent wasn't even aware that the illness didn't pay partial disability!!), think about the claim carefully before you lodge it and be prepared to challenge it if you need to.  

Bye Leanne :-)