Drug Overdose and Life Insurance Claims

Attention to anyone who has had an overdose death claim denied:

Nearly all drug overdose deaths are accidental. But getting a death claim paid when drugs are the cause requires experience, because life insurers don’t want to pay these claims. They put exclusions in the Policy that give them a way out of paying claims.

To get these claims paid you need a firm that knows how policy exclusions apply to a claim, exceptions based on circumstances, and how Courts have ruled in other claim disputes.

We’ve been doing this for 30 years, we know how to get death by overdose claims paid. If you need representation for getting a death claim paid, call us for your free consultation.

Call us now: 1-888-428-4868

Death by prescription drug overdose in the US is skyrocketing. The medical professionals who patients are turning to for healing are, in turn, prescribing solutions that are killing them. And, at a rapidly increasing rate.

The statistics state a 2.8 times increase in death by prescription drug overdose from 2001 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), and a 79% increase in 2020 due to Covid-19.

With life insurance and accidental death insurance claims insurers commonly deny the claim when the insured died from a drug overdose. But again and again these denials are challenged and overturned.

We’re leading the way in getting insurers to reconsider their denials and pay death claims related to overdose deaths. Over $250 million paid-out to our clients from denied claims.

Read: CDC says Drug Overdose Deaths Top 100,000 for First Time

2021 death toll from drug overdose up 29% from previous 12-months.

Read: Drug overdose deaths skyrocket during Covid-19

The CDC data shows that more than 87,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in the 12-month period that started in October 2019 and ended in September 2020.

Rather than reevaluate the dangers of these drugs, the manufacturers are offering additional drugs to combat the addictiveness of their own creations (Center for Public Integrity). While this trend continues, and the human cost goes up each year, the financial cost to a person’s family also increases.

One area of this financial cost is in denied life insurance claims. Nearly all accidental death insurance policies have carefully worded exemptions for death by drug overdose. And some life insurance policies, while in the 2 year contestability period, also have exclusions. The rub is that while death by prescription drug overdose is commonly deemed to be accidental on a death certificate, these insurance policy claims still get denied.

If you have a life insurance or accidental death claim that’s been denied due to overdose, contact us for representation. We specialize in fighting these claim denials with our team of medical specialists.

Will Life Insurance Pay For Drug Overdose?

Yes, but it’s not easy. Insurers don’t want to pay claims.

It’s quite common for a death certificate to list a Cause of Death as accidental when someone dies of a drug overdose. Logic would dictate that in such a case an accidental death policy will pay a benefit.

But as we investigate these claims for our clients we see that the insurance claims examiners often rely solely on autopsy reports, not death certificates, to make their claim denials.

In fact, neither document by itself is enough to make an accurate conclusion as to whether a claim should be paid for a drug overdose. Only by doing a thorough investigation of all the evidence can an accurate determination be made and a proper argument for paying a death claim for a drug overdose.

If you have a denied death claim with the cause of death is DRUG OVERDOSE, we can get it paid.

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Yes, Life Insurance Will Pay for Drug Overdose

We’ve investigated hundreds of claims where the person had positive results in their Toxicology Report for one or more substances. At first these claims were denied because no one dug into the details for the beneficiary. The insurers aren’t going to do it and our clients don’t have the background necessary.

We see gaping holes in how drug overdose claims are handled. For example; were their any other things that contributed to the death? Was a drug-to-drug evaluation done? Was the person aware of the substance when they ingested it? Was medical malpractice the cause?

Uncovering the true facts is what we do for our clients in order to get their claims paid. We do the digging with our experts, we get the insurer to re-evaluate the claim and we get the claims paid to our clients.

Toxicology Reports, Death Certificates and Denied Claims

Too often an insurer will do nothing more than get a Toxicology Report for their file, look at the death certificate that states “drug overdose”, and deny the claim.

While its a separate topic, the extent of the Toxicology Report is an issue when death by overdose happens. Assuming the Medical Examiner does a thorough toxicology examination, and not a simple exam, the results can be used to determine whether the death was accidental.

For starters the type of drug or drugs used has to be investigated. In many death claims there are more than one drug substance found in the deceased.

Multiple substance findings opens the door to how one drug affects another in a person’s biology. This is drug-to-drug interaction. In a recent claim appeal we found that the insured had ingested five separate medications and each had a unique toxic interaction with the others.

Drug to drug interaction in and of itself can be the cause of death, which would certainly be accidental and payable under many life insurance claims.

Another critical factor is a person’s ability to metabolize a specific drug. In just the same way that people metabolize food differently, people also metabolize medicines differently. And this is significant to the potentially poisonous effect of a prescription drug from one person to another.

Some drugs inhibit metabolism (a person’s ability to metabolize should be tested by a physician prior to prescribing certain medicines) to the point of causing lethal toxicity at even low doses.

Relying solely on the presence of a drug in a deceased’s body, as the basis to deny a death claim, is not sufficient. There’s no doubt a Toxicology Report, after a drug overdose death, will demonstrate a lethal amount of a drug in the person’s body, but this doesn’t tell us whether the event was accidental or not.

A Toxicology Report cannot, in a fair claim evaluation, be the entire bases for a claim denial.

Is a drug overdose considered an accidental death?

In evaluating a life insurance claim the question isn’t whether a certain drug (or combination of drugs) caused the death, the question is whether the person followed the prescription or not. Even when someone follows a prescription many other factors can complicate the body’s ability to metabolize the lethal substance. If this happens then the death is, without question, an accident. Insurance companies will not make any effort to do this level of investigation. We do. In our investigations we find that many life insurance claims and accidental death claims are denied without enough evidence and investigation.

There has to be an investigation into all possible contributors to the death. One has to look at all substances found in the body. What interaction did they? How were blood samples taken and stored? Were they tainted? Are testing results compliant and reliable? Absorption rates. Metabolism rates. Does the particular substance continue to leach into the blood post-mortem?

By employing medical and pharmaceutical analysis to these insurance claims we’ve been able to demonstrate why the deaths were accidental and why our clients claims should be paid.

In the case of drug overdose and life insurance claims the insurer will be looking for reasons to deny benefits. When a claim is denied the family is denied money and the deceased is denied his wish to provide financial support to his survivors.

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies, doctors and distributors are all making money for advocating the use of these drugs.

Until there is a collective moral re-compassing there will be many more unnecessary deaths due to drug overdose.

Getting a life insurance claim to pay when there’s been a death by drug overdose requires a lot experience. We employ science, medicine and law to get life insurance claims paid when the cause is overdose.

Contact us about your death claim. We know how to prepare these claims for approval and we know how to get them paid when they’ve been denied.

Contact us for a free consultation.

1-888-428-4868

Read:

Accidental Overdose Claim Pays $200,000

Fentanyl Overdose and Denied Death Claims

Other Medical Conditions that cause Claim Denials: