Long term disability leave begins

Given the poor prognosis that the doctor gave us six months ago, with much grief I didn't expect Gwohann will live past the short term disability leave (STD) which I initiated for him last September.  So when I received the call from MetLife, the administrative company for the Mentor Graphics disability insurance, that Gwohann has used up six months of STD benefit, and he will start long term disability leave (LTD) benefit. Despite the 40% cut in benefit, I was ecstatic because I realized that we have made it past six months!

Under the LTD plan, the monthly LTD benefit will be combined from three sources of income to make up for the 60% of Gwohann's salary:
1. MetLife - max benefit 40 months (calculated based on Gwohann's age), with the deduction of the following government disability benefits
2. California State Disability benefit - max benefit 52 weeks.
3. Social security disability (SSD) benefit - max benefit 6 months.

Because the government benefit takes about six months to get approval, MetLife will pre-pay the LTD benefit to meet 60% of Gwohann's salary, with the condition that we will forward MetLife whatever benefit we may receive from the government. MetLife requires us to sign an agreement that we will apply for the government benefit and will appeal if denied (SSD denied 90% of the applications). Because the application process is so lengthy, MetLife is afraid that their insured will not follow through. So MetLife wants their insured to use a third party agency (integrated Benefit Inc.) to apply for SSD and will pay for the agent fee out of the payment we may receive from the federal.  If we don't use the agency, we will remit the full payment anyway, so it is to our best interest that we use the third party agency.  It is interesting that there are companies make a living by applying for federal money for people. The SSD website even has pages advising how to use an agency.

So I have a lot of paperwork to fill out with each institute (MetLife, Cal State, SSD, Integrated Benefit, Inc) in order to get the LTD benefit. My challenge is finding a long stretch of free time so I don't have to keep reading the forms over, but I shall finish them soon.

How about medical insurance during LTD leave? We can stay on Mentor Graphics healthcare benefit for six months, after that we will use Cobra, which premium will be about 120% of what we are paying under Mentor Graphics. Thank God we can afford it.