To recover a death benefit, you must sometimes be ready to fight with the insurers. More and more French people are struggling to assert their rights when they are the beneficiaries of the death insurance contract. Sometimes, they are forced to ask doctors to lift medical secrecy to prove the cause of death of their loved one and touch their inheritance. The case, revealed this Wednesday in Le Parisien, is worrying enough to alert the Defender of Rights. He called the Ministry of Health on this subject.
The daily reports the case of Cécile Cayeux, a Sarthoise, who after the death of her mother had to fight for a year with her insurer to obtain the payment of the capital which was due to her. To prove that the cause of her mother’s death was indeed included in the insurance contract, the insurer demanded that she provide a detailed questionnaire, even if it meant going beyond medical secrecy.
Insurers are in fact taking advantage of a legal void, according to Alain-Michel Ceretti, patient rights adviser to the health center of the Defender of Rights, questioned by Le Parisien: “The Kouchner law on the rights of patients forgot to specify what are the conditions of access to the medical file for this death insurance”.
Faced with this obstacle to medical confidentiality, the Defender of Rights asks insurers to accept and be satisfied with the medical certificates drawn up by the doctor who was treating the deceased person.
