067: Disability Attorney Andrew Kantor on Patient Advocacy & Playing To Win

Andrew Kantor is an Associate at Kantor & Kantor, LLP. The son of the founding namesake attorneys, his practice is focused primarily on helping individuals obtain wrongfully-denied disability and life insurance benefits in both ERISA and non-ERISA (bad faith) policies. A client-centered attorney, he has emerged as one of the US’s leading experts on fighting disability denials, with a particular focus on chronic-fatigue-related illnesses like ME/CFS and Lyme disease. Andrew serves on the Board of The Elder Law and Disability Rights Center, and he was named a 2019 Rising Star in Southern California by Super Lawyers. In this episode, he shares his passion for advocacy, the logic behind disability rulings, and how to read between the lines when communicating with insurance companies and physicians.

Tune in as Andrew shares…

how he began his legal career, and his focus on ME/CFS cases (and unidentified chronic fatigue cases) the wider range of illnesses he’s come across in his practice: MS (multiple sclerosis), Parkinson’s, EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome), TBI (traumatic brain injury), autoimmune disease (including lupus), mental health issues, and lots of back injuries that insurance companies are 20 years behind medical science, and won’t push themselves to the cutting edge until someone else pushes them to that so much of the outcome among disability cases comes down to the treating physicians information about CPET (cardiopulmonary exercise testing), which is an objective test used to prove the extent of disability, and often used in ME/CFS cases why the pain scale is totally subjective in legal defense that the CDC is behind on information with regard to ME/CFS — and that there’s nothing more harmful to individuals than when the government takes a bad position patients’ difficulty in acquiring needed drugs — particularly opioids for those in need that workers’ comp is creating more harm than good in CA — blocking inroads to proper medical care a discussion of gender disparity in believing women’s pain that he has yet to lose a disability case — and that most settle to avoid litigation how his firm makes their services affordable to those in need (i.e., no upfront fees) — and free consultations why it’s so critical you read your employer’s insurance policy in detail before signing off on it (paying special attention to mental health allowances)

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