Some Quick Advice for Michigan Teachers with MESSA Insurance

One of the insurance plans through MESSA that every union I know pushes is the short-term and long-term disability insurance.  Considering my health history, I always signed up for it.  I was always told about how easy the program is, how helpful it is, and how really every teacher should get it.  I believed that.

The Reality: yes, short-term disability is rather easy to get and maintain, and it's super helpful.  Long-term disability, on the other hand, is a nightmare.  Despite what MESSA says and promises, their overarching goal is to get as many teachers off the long-term disability as possible.  This is mainly due to their underwriter, Cigna.

See, MESSA's disability insurance plan is underwritten by Cigna, which means that Cigna is really in charge.  Now, MESSA's reps will tell you that they have final say over whether or not to keep a client on the long-term disability plan, but the reality is, they just don't question Cigna often at all.  Cigna is known in the medical community as one of the more evil insurance companies, so this situation is definitely not in a teacher's best interest.

When you apply for either form of disability, MESSA requires a mountain of documentation.  Every medical provider you have seen, including massage therapists and chiropractors, must turn over their entire file on you with visit notes included.  MESSA can request (highly recommend and pay for) specific tests and more as well.  In all reality, the point of the documentation, at least in Cigna's eyes, is to find something, anything, that can make their case that you're not disabled.  Given that they review your case every three to six months, that's many times in which you can get denied your insurance benefit that you paid for.

If you end up on long-term disability, MESSA requires you to apply for SSDI (the federal disability program).  They pay for the advocate (Carl isn't really a lawyer, but he's an amazing lay advocate with a phenomenal office), and when you get approved, MESSA deducts what you get from SSDI from your disability check from them, which is fair.  Since the process takes so long, you end up getting back pay since SSDI is retroactive to the date the judge says it starts, and MESSA takes almost all of that. 

My Advice: After everything I went through with MESSA, the best advice I can give you is to sign up for the disability insurance if you're planning to get pregnant any time soon or know you need to be out for a short time due to a surgery of some kind.  If those don't apply to you, take the money you would pay for that plan, and put it in a savings account you don't touch.  Buy CDs, and keep them rolling over.  Don't plan on the long-term disability benefit to be there.  Even if you do pay for the benefit, doing this is still smart.

My story: My doctor finally convinced me that I needed to go on medical leave.  I applied for and qualified for short-term disability, and that process, while onerous for someone who was quite ill, wasn't horrible.  Once that ran out and I was switched to long-term disability, that's when things got awful.  I was approved, then I was denied, then I had to fight that, I won it back, and then six months later, they bumped me off again by misreading the same document they'd misread the last time and putting too much evidence on one test that was done by someone who admitted at the time she really didn't know what she was doing (which I documented and explained several times).  If I'd had the money to get that test re-done, I would have and would have fought for my benefit, but I didn't, and so I lost my benefit due to a nurse at Cigna misreading my file.  When I lost my long-term benefit, I lost my MESSA health insurance, too.

I ended up qualifying for SSDI, though, using the same documentation that Cigna and MESSA said proved I could be an elementary teacher (I taught high school and middle school) or a correspondence teacher.  MESSA has definitely taken a massive chunk of the retroactive pay, but at least it means I'm done with them.

SSDI is nowhere near the monthly benefit that the MESSA disability benefit is, and our family finances have taken a severe hit.  Sadly, that's just the way it is, so it's going to take us a long time to dig out of this hole. 

Bottom line: Don't depend on MESSA to be there for you.  Don't listen to what they say: watch what they do and what they allow Cigna to do for them.  Set money aside, any money, anything you can, so that you have a rainy day fund in case you get really sick from the job.  Don't do what I did and trust that MESSA will always have your back.