POINT BLANK REFUSAL ON LIBERTY LIVING LIFESTYLE POLICY ON DIAGNOSES OF MULTIPLE SCLIROSIS

My wife was recently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. She has and have been paying for more than 10 years for a Living Lifestyle benefit. Although the diagnoses was made now it is clear to the neurologist that the condition existed for a considerable period of time. According to all advertising material and to our knowledge there should be a payment on diagnoses, no matter how severe and then an adjustment depending how severe the condition is or in what stage it is.

We received a point blank refusal of any payment. Without any further investigation. It seems you don't only need to be diagnosed with MS but it also has to be extremely severe to be able to claim. My understanding of LIVING LIFESTYLE was that the money is available in order for you to try and maintain the same lifestyle by either having additional funds available for medical care etc or maybe assist where you have a loss of income. Or just to assist you when experiencing a life changing chronic illness. This seems not to be the case, your lifestyle must all but vanished and then you will receive payment when it is to late to do anything.

We lodged a complaint and did not receive any feedback from the 3 different e-mails provided to us.

Amongst other things I advised Liberty of the following via the "relations", "claimsescalation" and "opsclaims" e-mail addresses provided to me without any response:

As a consumer and insured we want to follow the official procedure of making it clear that we are:

1. extremely unhappy with the service received and the fact that you did not even bother to make personal contact with us. We want the matter escalated to the relevant department head and or director; 2. of the opinion that your documentation is misleading and contradicting in several instances. By having several definitions and percentages it is almost impossible for a normal consumer to understand what they are entitled to or not; 3. of the opinion that you mislead us as we were under the impression that we have cover for the illness according to the definition in all medical journals defined as Multiple Sclerosis, only to find out you have changed the definition of MS and most probably do this for other illnesses as well.

I am extremely worried as both my wife and my Living Lifestyle, Life Insurance and Income Protector policies are with Liberty and we are at an age where it will be difficult to change.

Liberty has shown total disregard for us as a client, handling what is a substantial claim, worse than Discovery handles my normal medical aid claims. We received a letter with several definitions of MS and several different definitions and payment percentages making it impossible to figure out what we will be entitled when. They refer to tables not supp**** or which they bothered to explain to you.