What to Do When Chronic Illness Stops You From Working
In this episode, Haylie Pomroy is joined by Edward Dabdoub, CEO and Founding Attorney of Dabdoub Law Firm, to discuss disability insurance and the legal challenges faced by individuals living with chronic and post-viral illnesses. He provides a deeper understanding of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and explains how his firm helps clients navigate disability insurance claims.
Edward shares how patients with chronic health conditions can find support and hope throughout the claims process, how individuals can advocate for themselves when seeking benefits, and how legal representation can help serve as a buffer between claimants and insurance companies.
Together, they emphasize the importance of working with professionals who understand the complexities of chronic illness in disability litigation. They also discuss the challenges many patients face in the workplace due to limited support and how securing appropriate disability benefits can help create the stability needed to focus on health and recovery.
Learn how ERISA and disability insurance claims impact individuals with chronic illness and discover the support available to help protect your rights and future. Tune in to Fast Metabolism Matters.
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Edward Dabdoub is the CEO and Founding Attorney of Dabdoub Law Firm, where he focuses on representing individuals entitled to disability benefits from insurance companies. He has extensive experience handling disability insurance claims and ERISA-governed long-term disability cases. Edward is a frequent speaker on disability insurance and ERISA matters for organizations such as the American Association for Justice and the Florida Association for Justice, and he also advises other attorneys in these areas. He graduated cum laude from the University of Miami School of Law, earned an MBA from Florida International University, and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Miami.
Website: https://www.longtermdisability.net/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwarddabdoub/
Haylie Pomroy, Founder and CEO of The Haylie Pomroy Group, is a leading health strategist specializing in metabolism, weight loss, and integrative wellness. With over 25 years of experience, she has worked with top medical institutions and high-profile clients, developing targeted programs and supplements rooted in the "Food is Medicine" philosophy. Inspired by her own autoimmune journey, she combines expertise in nutrition, biochemistry, and patient advocacy to help others reclaim their health. She is a New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet.
Learn more about Haylie Pomroy's approach to wellness through her website: https://hayliepomroy.com
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Transcript
Edward Dabdoub: The only person who can make a decision on whether you can't work, whether you're disabled, is you. You're the one that you wake up every day, you put your shoes on, you go through your daily routine to get yourself to work, and you're struggling. There's a point where you know deep down inside you cannot keep doing that. That's the point you need to call me, even if you're still employed.
Haylie Pomroy: I'm Haylie Pomroy, your host. I'm a #1 New York Times bestselling author, and I was the former director of the Integrative Medicine Program here at the Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine (INIM). I say former because you guys just like you, I am a lifelong learner, and I have decided to go back to school. I'm currently getting my PhD in neuroimmunology here at the Institute. When I was looking for a PhD program, I thought that there is no better place in the entire world to study the impact of inflammation, of neuroinflammation, and of what the heck we've got going on in chronic disease.
Today we're going to talk about disability and disability insurance. I have a very special guest joining me. He is the founding attorney of Dabdoub Law Firm. They specialize in disability insurance, and this is Eddie Dabdoub. Thank you, Eddie, so much for being here with me today. I really appreciate it. Our community, I think, needs this conversation.
Edward Dabdoub: I'm happy to be here. Thank you.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. You are also an ERISA, E-R-I-S-A attorney.
What does that mean?
Edward Dabdoub: Well, so ERISA is the area of federal law that applies to the overwhelming majority of disability insurance claims. And that's a question I get asked a lot. Even from attorneys, because ERISA, although it's this huge comprehensive statute that applies to the majority of insurance that working-class Americans have. About 80% of Americans have health insurance or disability insurance that's governed by ERISA, this statute. Nobody's ever heard of it.
Haylie Pomroy: Right. I hadn't heard of it, and I'm in this space. It's governed; is it for long-term disability or is it for chronic illness?
Edward Dabdoub: It's for all types of insurance. It would cover health insurance, life insurance, and definitely disability insurance. When somebody has a disability insurance claim, the laws that apply are the ERISA laws.
Haylie Pomroy: Wow. Okay. This is something that I'm just, I'm learning a lot, always, every podcast, but this is one I think that's critical for our community.
I'm going to take a couple steps back first. In our practice, we deal with a lot of individuals that have ME/CFS, POTS, environmental illness, Gulf War illness, a lot of different neuroinflammatory disorders, things like Parkinson's, ALS, viral reactivation, long COVID. We're seeing a ton of that right now. Many of our patients come through the door, and so many individuals in our community that are feeling extremely hopeless and don't realize that there are actual laws that can help them. Shed a little light on that for me. Give me, kind of, in pencils and cReyons, talk to me like a third grader. What's available or accessible to individuals that are struggling like this?
Edward Dabdoub: All those illnesses, diseases that you've mentioned, I've represented clients suffering from all of them, and there tends to be a shared sense of hopelessness when somebody has to stop working initially. Like you get the sense that these people, my clients, they feel like they've lost a part of themselves.
Haylie Pomroy: Well, most of them, or a lot of them, at least that have come through our clinic, there's a lot of highly functional type A movers and shakers. And they're just in a state of shock that they're in the state of health that they're in.
Edward Dabdoub: That's exactly right. And it seems like there's this mourning period where they've lost their occupation or part of their identity. And so there's a transition process.
But back to ERISA for a second here, because I should define what ERISA is.
It's an acronym that stands for Employee Retirement Income Security Act. It was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1974. So it's been around for a while, and Congress passed it, I think, mostly with good intentions of telling insurance companies, look, we'll pass this comprehensive statute that creates this legal framework for insurance claims. And we want insurance companies to go there and issue more insurance policies, go provide more health insurance and more disability insurance and other types of benefits to employees.
The stated goal in the statute itself is that it is for the benefit of employees and their beneficiaries, the beneficiaries of these insurance plans. What I have seen since ERISA was passed in 1974 is an evolution of an area of federal law that isn't necessarily friendly to the disabled. And so now we're operating in an environment where it's now truly a David versus Goliath situation where folks who are struggling.
Haylie Pomroy: There's so much money involved with the insurance companies.
Edward Dabdoub: And the insurance companies have deep, deep pockets. They understand ERISA. They know how to use the laws.
Haylie Pomroy: And so many lawyers don't. You have to be really, really savvy in disability claims for individuals like our patients, in my opinion, in order to navigate, I don't want to say against, but navigate in the arena with the insurance companies.
Edward Dabdoub: That's completely true. If you think about it, there are thousands of personal injury attorneys in any given state. There are probably only a couple of hundred attorneys in the country that specialize in disability insurance like my firm does.
Haylie Pomroy: It leads me to my perfect question. Why in the world do you do this type of law? Because I'll just tell you, being a patient advocate, I have an autoimmune disorder. I also have a learning disability, fought and won L.A. Unified School District, on behalf of my child. Being in that space of chronic illness with autoimmune, I am very healthy. But finding attorneys that had, not to mention, as versed as your firm is, but any knowledge of this stuff was crazy. And I was in L.A. Why? Why are you doing this type of law? What motivated you?
Edward Dabdoub: To be very candid, I fell into it right in my second year of law school. I took up a job as a law clerk just looking for experience. I didn't know what I wanted to do as an attorney. And it just so happened I ended up taking a law clerkship at a firm that had disability insurance cases. And that's what they were doing at the time. And I started working on these cases, and I found it very different, very interesting.
And one of the things I was really struck by is as I learned about ERISA, which, by the way, they don't teach about ERISA in most law schools.
Haylie Pomroy: My niece is at USC, and I had that conversation with her in preparation for this. And she said, “Auntie, I don't even…”
Edward Dabdoub: Never heard of it.
Haylie Pomroy: Next subject.
Edward Dabdoub: Exactly. And you would think that a federal law that touches 80% of working-class Americans would be at the top of the law school list.
Haylie Pomroy: Yes. But there might be people that want to bury it for a reason.
I'm just saying.
Edward Dabdoub: Maybe. And so I started working on these cases, and what I found really interesting was here you have a certain segment of the population, a really vulnerable segment of the population where they're struggling.
Haylie Pomroy: They don't feel good.
Edward Dabdoub: And they can't handle day-to-day stuff, much less navigate a disability insurance claim, where on the other side of it, you have a savvy insurance company that's not really looking out for their best interest. And looking at that dynamic and then understanding that ERISA was passed with good intentions, but then looking at how the law is today, I was struck that in the United States, we had that structure.
There's a shocking dichotomy. There's a shocking difference between, or chasm, a gap, between the people that need the help and the ability to get the help. Right.
Edward Dabdoub: That's true.
Haylie Pomroy: I mean, I was shocked. I mean, if I slipped and fell at a mall in L.A., there's a poster for everyone that has possibly slipped and fall at a mall to find legal support.
Hi, it's Haylie Pomroy, your host. I've written six New York Times bestselling books on metabolic pathways. And my latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do when your body's overburdened. If you go to HayliePomroy.com/book for a limited time, you can download a digital copy of this book completely free. That's HayliePomroy.com/book. Grab your free copy while supplies last. Now, back to our show.
Edward Dabdoub: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. There is. And I've been doing this for almost 20 years. And I'll tell you that I feel like I learn and hear something new and shocking every day. I'll share with you on the car ride up, one of the attorneys from my firm called me and said, “This might be a new law.” We just got a call from a potential client who has a severe illness, and his disability insurance claim was denied. I said, OK, that's not a shocker to me. What's the shocker? She said, he's the guy in charge of nuclear reactors. And he, among all the physical conditions he's suffering from, he's suffering from severe anxiety. And the insurance company essentially denied his claim saying, no, actually, we think you can continue doing that job.
Haylie Pomroy: We think you'll be OK. Just do a little stress reduction.
Edward Dabdoub: Shake it off.
Haylie Pomroy: Knuckle down and shake it off. Wow. Share with me some other situations. I mean, we hear we have individuals that I was just out of the country at a Congress for autoimmune disorders in Slovenia. And there were doctors — I mean, the doctor that discovered the antibody for lupus and I mean, just phenomenal, well-researched, just incredible, brilliant people. And I was sharing with him that in the United States, so many of our patients struggle with getting disability insurance. And they were floored. And I know there's socialized medicine in a lot of the countries that I was talking to, a lot of the doctors I was talking to in those countries. They can't even fathom it. They can't even wrap their heads around it. And it is so common.
Most of the people that come to your offices, what types of chronic illnesses are they dealing with?
Edward Dabdoub: I see it all. I mean, I have run into medical conditions I did not know existed. But everything from Parkinson's. We definitely see a lot of long COVID more recently, obviously. I've been handling ME/CFS claims.
Haylie Pomroy: You're already seeing long COVID.
Edward Dabdoub: We see a fair amount. But we actually just ended up wrapping up a case for a young lady. I can't divulge details that would identify her because of the attorney-client privilege, but I can say that she was 26 and her situation was so bad that when she got married, she was in a wheelchair in her wedding gown. And all of her wedding photos had her in that wheelchair. And to me, that was more powerful evidence than just about anything else I could send an insurance company. Why would anyone in their right mind—
Haylie Pomroy: Deny those claims?
Edward Dabdoub: Right. And yet her claim was denied. And we had to litigate that case.
Haylie Pomroy: Oh, well, thank you for doing that on her behalf, on her family's behalf, on her husband's behalf. That's a worthy fight.
Edward Dabdoub: It's certainly motivating, that's for sure. The way we handle a case like that is we show, look, she's either a complete liar. Her doctors are liars. Her in-laws, her husband, they're all in on this fake disability case. Or you just have to accept that some people can actually be disabled from chronic illnesses.
Haylie Pomroy: Yes, absolutely.
Edward Dabdoub: You have to polarize it.
Haylie Pomroy: But it's just terrible that a person would have to go to those lengths. Do people need to wait to a certain point before contacting your office? Because I'm an info seeker just by nature. When I started to have a problem, I started calling and talking and investigating. People talk about ready, aim, fire. I'm a ready, fire, aim. I seek knowledge, and then I pivot if it's not right. No judgment. And I pivot if it is. I lean in if it is right. At what point in people's cases do you encourage them to contact your office?
Edward Dabdoub: I don't think it's ever too soon. People sometimes get intimidated calling an attorney's office. And for us, it's just, no, reach out to us. We have eight attorneys. We all specialize in disability insurance. And all of us, we all dedicate some amount of our time in just talking to people. There's not a week that go by I don't speak to three, four new folks. Just one hour at a time, imparting as much information as they need. And maybe at some point they're going to need an attorney, but certainly there's no harm in having information up front.
Haylie Pomroy: Be empowered.
Edward Dabdoub: Exactly.
Haylie Pomroy: Right. And our goal is to get people on the journey to being well. And we have hope for every person that walks in. Dr. Harris the other day said, 20 doctors in 10 years before they finally land in our institute. Klimas says, I believe everybody that walks through our doors can get well. But one of the problems is, and Dr. Junco was just talking in another interview about how stress is such a deterrent for getting well. And I think that if people don't have an advocate to fight side by side with them through this process against their insurance companies or work or whatever, it's almost impossible to navigate all of that. And that itself is such a tremendous stress.
Edward Dabdoub: I think that's a very good point. One of the things we do as disability insurance attorneys is when we get involved, we completely remove the clients from having any communication with insurance companies. And so we act as a buffer between our clients and insurance companies. Insurance companies are not permitted to contact them. You can't show up at their house. You can't schedule them for these so-called independent medical evaluations by insurance company doctors. There's a new sheriff in town, essentially. And so the idea is that—
Haylie Pomroy: I want to stop you just for a second, because what you said is, I mean, you guys provide a ton of value for our patients. But what you just said is, I think, even more valuable than an award itself. And I'll tell you why. Because our patients don't have the bandwidth to go against Goliath. Period. They don't have the bandwidth, oftentimes, as you know, to exercise, to get up and be at work. I mean, we have people that come in, our patients and our clients that come in and talk to us about how derogatory or how negative of an impact some of those independent medical exams are.
I mean, people that have told them, you don't have a problem to their faces. And these are people that would give anything. There's not an award big enough. They'd trade any award. I haven't had one in my 30 years of practice that hasn't said, I would trade the award for never having to go through what I'm going through 10 times over. Right?
I didn't mean to stop you, but I just want, I don't know if you know, but from the patient perspective, the impact of you creating that buffer for them gives us as practitioner a patient to actually work with. And that's really important to us.
Edward Dabdoub: That's wonderful because we all know how much stress impacts chronic illnesses.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely.
Edward Dabdoub: And it exacerbates it. It makes it worse, and it's counterproductive. Just today, I had a conversation with a client, and she has a chronic illness, and we got to a point where we've negotiated a good settlement with the insurance company. And I had to speak with her about what her options were. And A, do you take a pretty decent settlement and get this monkey off your back and move on with your life and get rid of the stress? Or do you want me to continue fighting them and take this case all the way?
And she decided it wasn't worth it. She wanted the settlement. She wanted her life back. And that sometimes is the right decision for some people.
Haylie Pomroy: And also resources to be able to invest in your health. Because a lot of really good medicine, a lot of people are paying out of pocket for it. I mean, we see it all the time. We have a sliding scale at the Institute. That's why we have a year-plus waiting list. But we see individuals that go out for even nutritional IVs or even acupuncture. We have that in-house, but they go outwards, and they're paying cash out of pocket for it. And it's making a massive impact in their health. But where are they going to have those financial resources to infuse into their health when they're fighting? I mean, just the time that it takes to fight an insurance company. I don't know. We went through it. I'm a little bit probably have a little bit of a still sting, I guess I would say. We had a great attorney. And I consider this person was probably the biggest advocate our family's ever had.
Edward Dabdoub: It's wonderful. I think it's really important to find somebody who understands how to handle those situations.
Haylie Pomroy: And it's not common. Let me ask you. There's a couple of questions. It's okay to give out your phone number?
Edward Dabdoub: Absolutely.
Haylie Pomroy: Your toll-free number is 888-812-0393. And then, what I love is you have a digital handout That people can just kind of get information from. Is it like a questionnaire? Is it fax? Is it?
Edward Dabdoub: We had put together several booklets. Basic information on a handful of some of the more common chronic illnesses that we've seen. And it's really just a nuts-and-bolts on what to know if you have one of these chronic illnesses. We have long COVID, we have ME/CFS, Parkinson's, we have a handful of others. And it's basically, what do you need to know if you are suffering from these illnesses and you have a disability insurance claim, or you are considering submitting a disability insurance claim? And we've broken it down, really removing all of the legal jargon and making it just easy to understand by the average person.
Haylie Pomroy: No, I appreciate that because you can get so buried in kind of the legalese or the legal, talk to me about neuroimmunology, and we can talk all day long, but you start talking about that other stuff, and it just goes over. They can download these at longtermdisability.net. You guys, please go and grab the handouts because we really encourage our patients early in the process to understand if it's even an option. And I was talking to someone in business development the other day, and they said, I was there with another individual that runs this great business, and they say, are you running your business to sell your business? Are you running your business to keep your business? And they said, well, probably to keep my business. And they said, well, the odds are it's going to fail because you're not running it to sell it. You're not running it for someone, for it to be under the constraints of having to perform. You're running it because you enjoy it. It's probably, statistically, it's probably not going to be successful.
I use the same analogy in, we always encourage our community that knowledge is power. And so whether you are thinking about that you're going to need to file a disability claim or that's part of your journey towards health, having the knowledge or running your life as is if, can only make you more successful if you don't need to.
Help me understand: are there different types of disability, different levels of disability insurances? Like, how does that work, and where does disability support come from?
Edward Dabdoub: Great question. In terms of disability payments in the United States, you really have two sources. The first is Social Security disability benefits. Those are federal benefits provided to all working Americans. As long as you've paid into the Social Security System, taxes, whatnot, you qualify. That process takes years, unfortunately.
Haylie Pomroy: Years to get granted that?
Edward Dabdoub: Well, initially the Social Security Administration, they denied the overwhelming majority of these cases. And then you have to go through this mandatory appeals process, and eventually those will get approved. They just take a really long time, sometimes two or three years. I don't focus on disability insurance on the government side, but that is one option. And what we do in the firm is we coordinate to get folks who need that type of help into the hands of someone who can help them.
In my firm, what we focus on is a second option, which is private disability insurance policies. Somebody has an insurance policy through work, or they've purchased it on their own, and they have to submit a claim to the insurance company.
Haylie Pomroy: And a lot of people don't even realize they have these policies. We had a mutual that didn't have any idea that this was even an option. And no one stepped up and said, “Hey, I know you've taken a lot of work off; how can we…” Nobody stepped in and said. Their doctor did.
Edward Dabdoub: Sometimes it's part of the benefits package at work. Nobody thinks about disability until you become disabled. It's not something you're thinking you have. But it's always worthwhile to drop in an email or reaching out to HR where you work and asking for their benefits package. Take a look at what you have.
Haylie Pomroy: Do you help people look at their benefits packages?
Edward Dabdoub: Yes. We can do that too.
Haylie Pomroy: And help identify if they have it.
Edward Dabdoub: If they have disability insurance. And one of the good things about ERISA is if you send a written request to your employer, they are required within 30 days to respond, telling you what type of insurance you have.
Haylie Pomroy: Oh, so people don't know that. Let me just make sure that I understand this. If there's somebody out there and they're struggling and they're having a hard time, it doesn't hurt to just inquire?
Edward Dabdoub: No. Send a written request to the correct person at HR, and you should get a written response.
Haylie Pomroy: And what do they ask?
Edward Dabdoub: I would suggest, well, if you're interested in disability insurance, then just outright ask, “Do I have disability insurance coverage? If I do, please provide me a copy of the insurance policy.” And by law, they are required to respond and give you that insurance policy.
Haylie Pomroy: See, I would never have thought to do that myself. I appreciate that. That's a great tip. I appreciate that you guys do the conversations with our clients, and that's why I wanted to bring you on is so that our community could have access to you. Our patients have had such tremendous relief and tremendous support from your firm, but I think that our community is really out there struggling. And so I appreciate you coming in and coming on.
Two questions. How did we start engaging with you from the Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine? Like, how did you start working with us specifically?
Edward Dabdoub: I might have only been one year out of law school, and I had a really interesting case. I was representing an attorney, and Dr. Klimas was the treating physician, and that's how we ended up connecting. And then subsequent to that case, I had a few cases with Dr. Rey, and Dr. Rey was so passionate about helping her patients. I just couldn't help but like reach out to her, and we've connected; we've stayed connected. She's extraordinarily busy, as you know.
Haylie Pomroy: I'm happy for her, and I'm sad, especially with long COVID now. I mean, all of our ME/CFS, our neurologists, our immunologists, when it started coming, they all saw this happening. I mean, I asked the head of one of our leading advocacy groups, I said, did you guys see this coming? And they said, absolutely, absolutely. And when I was traveling with all the immunologists a couple of weeks ago, they all said, this is the pandemic. The long COVID's the pandemic. It's crazy.
Edward Dabdoub: And you know what's funny? I would have thought, I'm no medical expert, but I think I know a thing or two about chronic illnesses. I would have thought I would have slowly seen a dying out of long COVID claims on the insurance side. It's not. It's almost going up. Definitely something's going on. What's interesting to me, we spoke a lot about the expertise that you guys have and the wonderful physicians and the team.
Haylie Pomroy: We're very lucky.
Edward Dabdoub: Indeed. And juxtapose that to who the insurance companies are using to review these disability claims. These physicians and nurses that are reviewing the claims or examining my clients sometimes have no training, education, or experience. They are not equipped to be handling these types of claims.
Haylie Pomroy: Even rendering an opinion.
Edward Dabdoub: No. They have no business rendering an opinion. But I sometimes wonder if the insurance companies don't do that purposely.
Haylie Pomroy: Oh, of course.
Edward Dabdoub: Because they could find the right doctors to look at it.
Haylie Pomroy: Right. Why don't they call Dr. Rey?
Edward Dabdoub: They know what Dr. Rey would say.
Haylie Pomroy: Why don't they call Dr. Irina? Or Tony Komaroff or the people that know this industry. Absolutely. That are very discerning. They don't just feel like a person has a chronic illness. They go to great lengths to run diagnostics to help identify what's going on in these patients. I mean, the identification is so important to customize and tailor the treatment. You said that very kindly. I will flat out tell you that it behooves insurance companies to not have somebody that can identify chronic systemic inflammation, ME/CFS, long COVID. And it behooves them to not have that.
I had a situation just recently. My daughter was in the hospital at UCLA. I love UCLA. I have great friends in most of the medical departments at UCLA. She had a very strange thing going on immune-wise. And they brought an infectious disease, and they're phenomenal anyway, but they're overly kind to me. They couldn't figure something out. And I have Dr. Klimas call me on her cell phone, and we page in, we're group and talking or this or that. And Dr. Klimas says, check this, this, this, this, and this. And sure, I was either going to fly her here to Florida, or she was going to phone in. I mean, that was my baby. My daughter.
And because she had that expertise, she was able to identify that. And again, they were kind to me because I have a relationship with them, but I don't even have to only imagine, I drove my daughter from a tiny hospital in Arizona, four hours in the middle of the night, to a major hospital where I have friends because of the way she and I were being treated at this tiny hospital. It was like, you're 22. You're fine. You're healthy. I wouldn't even admit you. Oh no. Now we're going to do a lumbar puncture and transport you. I mean, it was so crazy. And this isn't chronic. Our community out there, we just had a community member. We had an in-person retreat. One of our community members was saying she has this chronic autoimmune disorder and it's in full flare. And she said, the doctor said, I don't even really believe in that autoimmune disorder. And I just went, we're not talking about unicorns and rainbows.
Edward Dabdoub: I'm not surprised.
Haylie Pomroy: No, but I was just, I appreciate that you're not surprised because you're an advocate for us.
Edward Dabdoub: But good thing you had Dr. Klimas's number and speed dial. But not everybody has Klimas’ and speed dial. That's the problem.
Haylie Pomroy: That's the inequity. And that's where you guys come in to help us bridge that gap so many times for our patients. And we really genuinely appreciate that.
Edward Dabdoub: Well, it's been wonderful working with you guys also. We can't do it alone. We're lawyers, and we're not Matlock. That's a fictional character. We need the treating team to provide the medical evidence and to substantiate it.
Haylie Pomroy: Yes. But even though docs like Klimas and Rozenfeld and Reneska and Hugo that you just saw leaving here and Dr. Rey, I mean, sometimes I wonder, they're writing letters in the middle of the nights. They're superheroes as far as in this aspect of it, none of us can litigate, and none of us understand the law. I mean, we just can't.
Let me ask you another question. And so at what point, does a person have to be out of work, like not working, before they contact you?
Edward Dabdoub: No. The short answer is no. I think the sooner they call me, the better. And I think preparation is key. If they're already struggling at work, I like to tell people that the only person who can make a decision on whether you can't work, whether you're disabled, is you. You're the one that you wake up every day, you put your shoes on, you go through your daily routine to get yourself to work, and you're struggling. There's a point where deep down inside, you cannot keep doing that. That's the point you need to call me, even if you're still employed.
Haylie Pomroy: Hi, it's Haylie Pomroy, your host. When I was going through my health crisis, the worst part of it was feeling lost and alone. And I decided that I didn't want anybody else to feel as desperate as I did. That's why we set up a private membership group where you can come in, ask questions, get support, be connected with people that can actually help you on your health journey. If you go to HayliePomroy.com/member, you can join me for 30 days for free. I'll see you there. We can jump in, and we can start to organize the path for your wellness. That's HayliePomroy.com/member. I will see you there.
Now back to our show. Well, we have a community member that and she's got an amazing, she has an amazing work community. It's not that she's a bad employer or she's in a bad environment. To the point, she burned through all her vacation, all her sick pay. And then her colleagues are donating their off time, their PTOs, which is so cool of them because they're amazing. And I just said, we're having a conversation. I said, “Is there a reason why you won't entertain or talk to disability?” Like, are you looking at all of your options here? How long is this going to last? How many of your friends at work really want to give up their time with their children and their family because you're not getting supported? And she just didn't even think about it. I think she thought she was going to wait out long COVID.
Edward Dabdoub: And what is the human cost to her in continuing to push, especially with the nature of that illness?
Right. We need that bandwidth, and we need those reservoirs to change the trajectory of our health. We want them to be able to focus on their health so we can get them well. I think that's some of the gap that, or some of what we need you to bridge for us, is to get us as much of the human being to be able to be to their appointment and to be able to execute the care so we can get that person healthy. We are swamped with long COVID. I mean, I have an opinion that our clinic, our institute, our research is super primed for it because we've been leading the charge on myalgic encephalomyelitis and chronic fatigue syndrome for so long. And one of our docs said yesterday, when I was talking about having you and she said something very interesting was everybody said there's such a similarity. There's such a similarity. One of our docs said it's the same thing.
Haylie Pomroy: It's like using the term pneumonia. Pneumonia can have many different causes. Long COVID has this neuroinflammatory response and this immune modulation problem that so does ME/CFS. And it has an immune component, potentially even an autoimmune trigger component. But what's causing it, like in ME/CFS, maybe it's an environmental toxin, nuclear reactor. Maybe it's an environmental toxin like our Gulf War injury individuals. Maybe it's viral, like Epstein-Barr virus reactivation or one of the human herpes. And maybe this is COVID virus activation. We were prepped. Our practitioners were prepped. Our research was really prepped.
Edward Dabdoub: Which is wonderful for the community.
Haylie Pomroy: It is.
It's really interesting that you bring that point up because it is true. These two conditions, I think, are pretty much the same. And I'll tell you from the legal side of things, we handle it one and the same. The way we handle these cases are the same to the insurance companies. What the insurance companies tend to sometimes do is they look at these two conditions, and they say two things. One is, A, you can't prove what it is. You can't prove the label that you're giving it. And B, these are subjective symptoms for the most part. That's the argument they take. Those are two arguments we're used to receiving from insurance companies, and we know how to handle those.
Haylie Pomroy: But that's not the case at all in Germany, in France, in Italy, in Spain.
Edward Dabdoub: The United States is behind on a lot of the medical things.
Haylie Pomroy: But I think because there are more biomarkers that are coming out every day. I mean, it was not that many years ago that we could identify lupus as a specific autoimmune disorder. I mean, that's really, really recent in medicine. I got to meet the guy that identified those. Fabulous. Part of our research is creating biomarkers so that there's a definitive. We can say a person has high cholesterol, and the American Medical Association says if it's above 200, now I think it's 190, they keep lowering it. I wonder why. But they have this biomarker that says, if this, then that. More and more in the autoimmune world, people with lupus were told they were crazy for years. People with MS were told they were crazy for years. Once they started to establish a biomarker, they couldn't do that anymore. They said, if this, then this diagnosis. There are biomarkers that are coming every day that are unique for ME/CFS, long COVID, those types of neuroinflammatory things. And then what are they going to say?
Edward Dabdoub: Well, those things really help on the legal side of the case. What I have noticed is over the 20 years I've been doing this, the insurance companies, I think, purposely slow down accepting the medical evidence that has been coming out. Starts off with outright rejecting it, and then when it's hard to reject it anymore, they slowly come around to accepting it. Then the other problem is the federal judges. A lot of the federal judges have just kind of bought into the insurance company narrative on these illnesses over the years, and it takes time to untangle that. And so a lot of the times I'm in front of judges on these cases having to educate them on what the medicine looks like.
Haylie Pomroy: That brings me to why it's so important for us. We have two massive research programs right now in long COVID. I always think of it from the treatment perspective. That's my, is we do translational research . Our goal is to bring it from the bench or the lab to the bedside. How can we get treatment as quickly as possible to patients that are going to make a change in their life? You just flipped a switch, a light bulb on, which is it's critically important so that they can get the support that they need. They can get insurance. I mean, health insurance. I mean, we have individuals that because they've lost their job, they can't go to the doctors. We do a sliding scale. When do you ever hear of that? When do you hear of an immunologist, a neuroimmunologist that'll take what you can give?
Edward Dabdoub: I know. Isn't that incredible?
Haylie Pomroy: But it's terrible.
Edward Dabdoub: It is shocking though, that in the United States that most people lose their health insurance because they become disabled. Isn't that when you need your health insurance the most? I get calls from people who say, I can't keep working, but I can't stop working. I need money to put food on the table for my kids, and I need the health insurance, and all this is tied to my job. And guess what happens? They grind on, and they get worse. And it gets harder for them to get better when they actually eventually stop working.
Haylie Pomroy: Unfortunately, most of the people that walk through our office, we wish we would have saw them 2 years, 5 years, 10 years ago.
Edward Dabdoub: And I would say the same thing for most of my clients. Let's go back to what we were talking about earlier. I think it's really important to contact us early.
Haylie Pomroy: I'm going to give out your number one more time, 888-812-0393. And they can talk to somebody from your firm.
Edward Dabdoub: Or me.
Haylie Pomroy: Oh, watch it.
Edward Dabdoub: I'm still employed.
Haylie Pomroy: Eddie over here is going to spend all his time on the phone. No, we need you defending our patients. But you can start to have the conversation. I wish we were the first stop; we all do. Because we have such a mess to unravel sometimes because of the delay in individuals getting adequate care. And I'm sure you feel that that's the same thing legally.
Edward Dabdoub: It is the same thing.
People have maybe been out of a job. We have somebody that blew through their pension. Now they owe a ton of taxes. Because they didn't retain, because they were just thinking.
Edward Dabdoub: They need help. Yes. You need the help on the legal side. You need, obviously, the help on the medical side. Sometimes it's really not their fault, though. What I have seen with some of my clients is even though they've been treated with doctors, they've been bouncing around to different kinds of doctors until they find, like you guys. And sometimes that's one, one and a half years into not being well. It's not always their fault. I think sometimes it takes them a while to come around to realizing, wait, the doctors aren't figuring out what's going on with me.
They keep referring me to other types of doctors. No one's figuring it out. And then at some point, I think they start to look into it themselves.
Haylie Pomroy: And they become empowered. They have to. Because, I mean, we were saying the other day, we do all kinds of aspects of medicine: environmental medicine, nutrition, immunology, environmental medicine, integrative medicine, not because we think it's going to be fun for us to do, because that's what it takes to get our patients well. But we also need support systems. They need support. And one of the things that we love about your firm is it's you guys do: we have a philosophy, which isn't as unique, like you always say, we are more unique from a medical perspective, is you're looking at the patient's whole well-being. And I think that's really important to us.
I love your handouts. They can go to longtermdisability.net, they can download all of those. They can start looking. Our community is lifelong learners. They've had to be, not because they want to be, but because they've had to be. All of our advocacy groups and stuff, I'll make sure that they have this.
I would like to have you on with Dr. Rey and Dr. Klimas together and maybe look at some case studies that we can talk about that we've worked together. Can I get you to come back for our community?
Edward Dabdoub: Absolutely. I'd love to do that. That sounds like a great idea.
Haylie Pomroy: I think it'd be great. I'd like to, our head of veterans, I think it'd be really good too, because I know how much work you've done for all of our individuals dealing with chronic disease.
Eddie, I can't thank you enough. I know your time is extremely valuable, but I really appreciate you talking to our community. You guys, give them a call, download the information.
Hey, this is Haylie Pomroy. Right now, we're going to transition into our Q&A portion of the podcast. You'll notice that we have live viewers asking us questions. They're my Fast Metabolism members, and they get all kinds of amazing benefits, like member discounts on my world-class supplements and shakes, every product, every day, personalized guidance and support from myself and my team, and even the ability to ask questions of our podcast guests. If you have questions and want to get them answered, you should absolutely join my membership. And if you go to HayliePomroy.com/member you can join for free for 30 days. Again, that's HayliePomroy.com/member, and join for free for 30 days. I can't wait to see you there.
We are here to help individuals, but we also want to make sure that everybody has hope. Hope that there's advocacy for them. Hope that there's some relief for them. And also hope that we can have a multifaceted plan that can get them the support they need.
And we consider you a very important partner for us with that.
Edward Dabdoub: Well, thank you. The feeling is mutual. It's been like that throughout my entire career. And I want to end by saying thank you and echoing what you're saying: hope. Don't give up hope. There are people out there that know what to do to help you. Just reach out.
Haylie Pomroy: Reach out. And it's not your fault. And we're here to help.
Edward Dabdoub: That's right.
Haylie Pomroy: Awesome. We'll see you soon.
Edward Dabdoub: Thank you.
Haylie Pomroy: Thank you.
In this episode, Haylie Pomroy is joined by Edward Dabdoub, CEO and Founding Attorney of Dabdoub Law Firm, to discuss disability insurance and the legal challenges faced by individuals living with chronic and post-viral illnesses. He provides a deeper understanding of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and explains how his firm helps clients navigate disability insurance claims.
Edward shares how patients with chronic health conditions can find support and hope throughout the claims process, how individuals can advocate for themselves when seeking benefits, and how legal representation can help serve as a buffer between claimants and insurance companies.
Together, they emphasize the importance of working with professionals who understand the complexities of chronic illness in disability litigation. They also discuss the challenges many patients face in the workplace due to limited support and how securing appropriate disability benefits can help create the stability needed to focus on health and recovery.
Learn how ERISA and disability insurance claims impact individuals with chronic illness and discover the support available to help protect your rights and future. Tune in to Fast Metabolism Matters.
If your body feels like it's running on empty, overburdened, or just not responding the way it used to, Haylie's latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do. Download your free digital copy today and start understanding what your body is trying to tell you.
Free Download: Get Your Copy of Toxic Overload 👉 https://hayliepomroy.com/pages/toxic-overload
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Join the Fast Metabolism Membership — First 30 Days Free 👉 https://hayliepomroy.com/pages/fast-metabolism-membership
Edward Dabdoub is the CEO and Founding Attorney of Dabdoub Law Firm, where he focuses on representing individuals entitled to disability benefits from insurance companies. He has extensive experience handling disability insurance claims and ERISA-governed long-term disability cases. Edward is a frequent speaker on disability insurance and ERISA matters for organizations such as the American Association for Justice and the Florida Association for Justice, and he also advises other attorneys in these areas. He graduated cum laude from the University of Miami School of Law, earned an MBA from Florida International University, and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Miami.
Website: https://www.longtermdisability.net/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwarddabdoub/
Haylie Pomroy, Founder and CEO of The Haylie Pomroy Group, is a leading health strategist specializing in metabolism, weight loss, and integrative wellness. With over 25 years of experience, she has worked with top medical institutions and high-profile clients, developing targeted programs and supplements rooted in the "Food is Medicine" philosophy. Inspired by her own autoimmune journey, she combines expertise in nutrition, biochemistry, and patient advocacy to help others reclaim their health. She is a New York Times bestselling author of The Fast Metabolism Diet.
Learn more about Haylie Pomroy's approach to wellness through her website: https://hayliepomroy.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hayliepomroy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hayliepomroy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@hayliepomroy/videos
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayliepomroy/
Transcript
Edward Dabdoub: The only person who can make a decision on whether you can't work, whether you're disabled, is you. You're the one that you wake up every day, you put your shoes on, you go through your daily routine to get yourself to work, and you're struggling. There's a point where you know deep down inside you cannot keep doing that. That's the point you need to call me, even if you're still employed.
Haylie Pomroy: I'm Haylie Pomroy, your host. I'm a #1 New York Times bestselling author, and I was the former director of the Integrative Medicine Program here at the Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine (INIM). I say former because you guys just like you, I am a lifelong learner, and I have decided to go back to school. I'm currently getting my PhD in neuroimmunology here at the Institute. When I was looking for a PhD program, I thought that there is no better place in the entire world to study the impact of inflammation, of neuroinflammation, and of what the heck we've got going on in chronic disease.
Today we're going to talk about disability and disability insurance. I have a very special guest joining me. He is the founding attorney of Dabdoub Law Firm. They specialize in disability insurance, and this is Eddie Dabdoub. Thank you, Eddie, so much for being here with me today. I really appreciate it. Our community, I think, needs this conversation.
Edward Dabdoub: I'm happy to be here. Thank you.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely. You are also an ERISA, E-R-I-S-A attorney.
What does that mean?
Edward Dabdoub: Well, so ERISA is the area of federal law that applies to the overwhelming majority of disability insurance claims. And that's a question I get asked a lot. Even from attorneys, because ERISA, although it's this huge comprehensive statute that applies to the majority of insurance that working-class Americans have. About 80% of Americans have health insurance or disability insurance that's governed by ERISA, this statute. Nobody's ever heard of it.
Haylie Pomroy: Right. I hadn't heard of it, and I'm in this space. It's governed; is it for long-term disability or is it for chronic illness?
Edward Dabdoub: It's for all types of insurance. It would cover health insurance, life insurance, and definitely disability insurance. When somebody has a disability insurance claim, the laws that apply are the ERISA laws.
Haylie Pomroy: Wow. Okay. This is something that I'm just, I'm learning a lot, always, every podcast, but this is one I think that's critical for our community.
I'm going to take a couple steps back first. In our practice, we deal with a lot of individuals that have ME/CFS, POTS, environmental illness, Gulf War illness, a lot of different neuroinflammatory disorders, things like Parkinson's, ALS, viral reactivation, long COVID. We're seeing a ton of that right now. Many of our patients come through the door, and so many individuals in our community that are feeling extremely hopeless and don't realize that there are actual laws that can help them. Shed a little light on that for me. Give me, kind of, in pencils and cReyons, talk to me like a third grader. What's available or accessible to individuals that are struggling like this?
Edward Dabdoub: All those illnesses, diseases that you've mentioned, I've represented clients suffering from all of them, and there tends to be a shared sense of hopelessness when somebody has to stop working initially. Like you get the sense that these people, my clients, they feel like they've lost a part of themselves.
Haylie Pomroy: Well, most of them, or a lot of them, at least that have come through our clinic, there's a lot of highly functional type A movers and shakers. And they're just in a state of shock that they're in the state of health that they're in.
Edward Dabdoub: That's exactly right. And it seems like there's this mourning period where they've lost their occupation or part of their identity. And so there's a transition process.
But back to ERISA for a second here, because I should define what ERISA is.
It's an acronym that stands for Employee Retirement Income Security Act. It was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1974. So it's been around for a while, and Congress passed it, I think, mostly with good intentions of telling insurance companies, look, we'll pass this comprehensive statute that creates this legal framework for insurance claims. And we want insurance companies to go there and issue more insurance policies, go provide more health insurance and more disability insurance and other types of benefits to employees.
The stated goal in the statute itself is that it is for the benefit of employees and their beneficiaries, the beneficiaries of these insurance plans. What I have seen since ERISA was passed in 1974 is an evolution of an area of federal law that isn't necessarily friendly to the disabled. And so now we're operating in an environment where it's now truly a David versus Goliath situation where folks who are struggling.
Haylie Pomroy: There's so much money involved with the insurance companies.
Edward Dabdoub: And the insurance companies have deep, deep pockets. They understand ERISA. They know how to use the laws.
Haylie Pomroy: And so many lawyers don't. You have to be really, really savvy in disability claims for individuals like our patients, in my opinion, in order to navigate, I don't want to say against, but navigate in the arena with the insurance companies.
Edward Dabdoub: That's completely true. If you think about it, there are thousands of personal injury attorneys in any given state. There are probably only a couple of hundred attorneys in the country that specialize in disability insurance like my firm does.
Haylie Pomroy: It leads me to my perfect question. Why in the world do you do this type of law? Because I'll just tell you, being a patient advocate, I have an autoimmune disorder. I also have a learning disability, fought and won L.A. Unified School District, on behalf of my child. Being in that space of chronic illness with autoimmune, I am very healthy. But finding attorneys that had, not to mention, as versed as your firm is, but any knowledge of this stuff was crazy. And I was in L.A. Why? Why are you doing this type of law? What motivated you?
Edward Dabdoub: To be very candid, I fell into it right in my second year of law school. I took up a job as a law clerk just looking for experience. I didn't know what I wanted to do as an attorney. And it just so happened I ended up taking a law clerkship at a firm that had disability insurance cases. And that's what they were doing at the time. And I started working on these cases, and I found it very different, very interesting.
And one of the things I was really struck by is as I learned about ERISA, which, by the way, they don't teach about ERISA in most law schools.
Haylie Pomroy: My niece is at USC, and I had that conversation with her in preparation for this. And she said, “Auntie, I don't even…”
Edward Dabdoub: Never heard of it.
Haylie Pomroy: Next subject.
Edward Dabdoub: Exactly. And you would think that a federal law that touches 80% of working-class Americans would be at the top of the law school list.
Haylie Pomroy: Yes. But there might be people that want to bury it for a reason.
I'm just saying.
Edward Dabdoub: Maybe. And so I started working on these cases, and what I found really interesting was here you have a certain segment of the population, a really vulnerable segment of the population where they're struggling.
Haylie Pomroy: They don't feel good.
Edward Dabdoub: And they can't handle day-to-day stuff, much less navigate a disability insurance claim, where on the other side of it, you have a savvy insurance company that's not really looking out for their best interest. And looking at that dynamic and then understanding that ERISA was passed with good intentions, but then looking at how the law is today, I was struck that in the United States, we had that structure.
There's a shocking dichotomy. There's a shocking difference between, or chasm, a gap, between the people that need the help and the ability to get the help. Right.
Edward Dabdoub: That's true.
Haylie Pomroy: I mean, I was shocked. I mean, if I slipped and fell at a mall in L.A., there's a poster for everyone that has possibly slipped and fall at a mall to find legal support.
Hi, it's Haylie Pomroy, your host. I've written six New York Times bestselling books on metabolic pathways. And my latest book, Toxic Overload, tells you exactly what to do when your body's overburdened. If you go to HayliePomroy.com/book for a limited time, you can download a digital copy of this book completely free. That's HayliePomroy.com/book. Grab your free copy while supplies last. Now, back to our show.
Edward Dabdoub: Yeah. I mean, absolutely. There is. And I've been doing this for almost 20 years. And I'll tell you that I feel like I learn and hear something new and shocking every day. I'll share with you on the car ride up, one of the attorneys from my firm called me and said, “This might be a new law.” We just got a call from a potential client who has a severe illness, and his disability insurance claim was denied. I said, OK, that's not a shocker to me. What's the shocker? She said, he's the guy in charge of nuclear reactors. And he, among all the physical conditions he's suffering from, he's suffering from severe anxiety. And the insurance company essentially denied his claim saying, no, actually, we think you can continue doing that job.
Haylie Pomroy: We think you'll be OK. Just do a little stress reduction.
Edward Dabdoub: Shake it off.
Haylie Pomroy: Knuckle down and shake it off. Wow. Share with me some other situations. I mean, we hear we have individuals that I was just out of the country at a Congress for autoimmune disorders in Slovenia. And there were doctors — I mean, the doctor that discovered the antibody for lupus and I mean, just phenomenal, well-researched, just incredible, brilliant people. And I was sharing with him that in the United States, so many of our patients struggle with getting disability insurance. And they were floored. And I know there's socialized medicine in a lot of the countries that I was talking to, a lot of the doctors I was talking to in those countries. They can't even fathom it. They can't even wrap their heads around it. And it is so common.
Most of the people that come to your offices, what types of chronic illnesses are they dealing with?
Edward Dabdoub: I see it all. I mean, I have run into medical conditions I did not know existed. But everything from Parkinson's. We definitely see a lot of long COVID more recently, obviously. I've been handling ME/CFS claims.
Haylie Pomroy: You're already seeing long COVID.
Edward Dabdoub: We see a fair amount. But we actually just ended up wrapping up a case for a young lady. I can't divulge details that would identify her because of the attorney-client privilege, but I can say that she was 26 and her situation was so bad that when she got married, she was in a wheelchair in her wedding gown. And all of her wedding photos had her in that wheelchair. And to me, that was more powerful evidence than just about anything else I could send an insurance company. Why would anyone in their right mind—
Haylie Pomroy: Deny those claims?
Edward Dabdoub: Right. And yet her claim was denied. And we had to litigate that case.
Haylie Pomroy: Oh, well, thank you for doing that on her behalf, on her family's behalf, on her husband's behalf. That's a worthy fight.
Edward Dabdoub: It's certainly motivating, that's for sure. The way we handle a case like that is we show, look, she's either a complete liar. Her doctors are liars. Her in-laws, her husband, they're all in on this fake disability case. Or you just have to accept that some people can actually be disabled from chronic illnesses.
Haylie Pomroy: Yes, absolutely.
Edward Dabdoub: You have to polarize it.
Haylie Pomroy: But it's just terrible that a person would have to go to those lengths. Do people need to wait to a certain point before contacting your office? Because I'm an info seeker just by nature. When I started to have a problem, I started calling and talking and investigating. People talk about ready, aim, fire. I'm a ready, fire, aim. I seek knowledge, and then I pivot if it's not right. No judgment. And I pivot if it is. I lean in if it is right. At what point in people's cases do you encourage them to contact your office?
Edward Dabdoub: I don't think it's ever too soon. People sometimes get intimidated calling an attorney's office. And for us, it's just, no, reach out to us. We have eight attorneys. We all specialize in disability insurance. And all of us, we all dedicate some amount of our time in just talking to people. There's not a week that go by I don't speak to three, four new folks. Just one hour at a time, imparting as much information as they need. And maybe at some point they're going to need an attorney, but certainly there's no harm in having information up front.
Haylie Pomroy: Be empowered.
Edward Dabdoub: Exactly.
Haylie Pomroy: Right. And our goal is to get people on the journey to being well. And we have hope for every person that walks in. Dr. Harris the other day said, 20 doctors in 10 years before they finally land in our institute. Klimas says, I believe everybody that walks through our doors can get well. But one of the problems is, and Dr. Junco was just talking in another interview about how stress is such a deterrent for getting well. And I think that if people don't have an advocate to fight side by side with them through this process against their insurance companies or work or whatever, it's almost impossible to navigate all of that. And that itself is such a tremendous stress.
Edward Dabdoub: I think that's a very good point. One of the things we do as disability insurance attorneys is when we get involved, we completely remove the clients from having any communication with insurance companies. And so we act as a buffer between our clients and insurance companies. Insurance companies are not permitted to contact them. You can't show up at their house. You can't schedule them for these so-called independent medical evaluations by insurance company doctors. There's a new sheriff in town, essentially. And so the idea is that—
Haylie Pomroy: I want to stop you just for a second, because what you said is, I mean, you guys provide a ton of value for our patients. But what you just said is, I think, even more valuable than an award itself. And I'll tell you why. Because our patients don't have the bandwidth to go against Goliath. Period. They don't have the bandwidth, oftentimes, as you know, to exercise, to get up and be at work. I mean, we have people that come in, our patients and our clients that come in and talk to us about how derogatory or how negative of an impact some of those independent medical exams are.
I mean, people that have told them, you don't have a problem to their faces. And these are people that would give anything. There's not an award big enough. They'd trade any award. I haven't had one in my 30 years of practice that hasn't said, I would trade the award for never having to go through what I'm going through 10 times over. Right?
I didn't mean to stop you, but I just want, I don't know if you know, but from the patient perspective, the impact of you creating that buffer for them gives us as practitioner a patient to actually work with. And that's really important to us.
Edward Dabdoub: That's wonderful because we all know how much stress impacts chronic illnesses.
Haylie Pomroy: Absolutely.
Edward Dabdoub: And it exacerbates it. It makes it worse, and it's counterproductive. Just today, I had a conversation with a client, and she has a chronic illness, and we got to a point where we've negotiated a good settlement with the insurance company. And I had to speak with her about what her options were. And A, do you take a pretty decent settlement and get this monkey off your back and move on with your life and get rid of the stress? Or do you want me to continue fighting them and take this case all the way?
And she decided it wasn't worth it. She wanted the settlement. She wanted her life back. And that sometimes is the right decision for some people.
Haylie Pomroy: And also resources to be able to invest in your health. Because a lot of really good medicine, a lot of people are paying out of pocket for it. I mean, we see it all the time. We have a sliding scale at the Institute. That's why we have a year-plus waiting list. But we see individuals that go out for even nutritional IVs or even acupuncture. We have that in-house, but they go outwards, and they're paying cash out of pocket for it. And it's making a massive impact in their health. But where are they going to have those financial resources to infuse into their health when they're fighting? I mean, just the time that it takes to fight an insurance company. I don't know. We went through it. I'm a little bit probably have a little bit of a still sting, I guess I would say. We had a great attorney. And I consider this person was probably the biggest advocate our family's ever had.
Edward Dabdoub: It's wonderful. I think it's really important to find somebody who understands how to handle those situations.
Haylie Pomroy: And it's not common. Let me ask you. There's a couple of questions. It's okay to give out your phone number?
Edward Dabdoub: Absolutely.
Haylie Pomroy: Your toll-free number is 888-812-0393. And then, what I love is you have a digital handout That people can just kind of get information from. Is it like a questionnaire? Is it fax? Is it?
Edward Dabdoub: We had put together several booklets. Basic information on a handful of some of the more common chronic illnesses that we've seen. And it's really just a nuts-and-bolts on what to know if you have one of these chronic illnesses. We have long COVID, we have ME/CFS, Parkinson's, we have a handful of others. And it's basically, what do you need to know if you are suffering from these illnesses and you have a disability insurance claim, or you are considering submitting a disability insurance claim? And we've broken it down, really removing all of the legal jargon and making it just easy to understand by the average person.
Haylie Pomroy: No, I appreciate that because you can get so buried in kind of the legalese or the legal, talk to me about neuroimmunology, and we can talk all day long, but you start talking about that other stuff, and it just goes over. They can download these at longtermdisability.net. You guys, please go and grab the handouts because we really encourage our patients early in the process to understand if it's even an option. And I was talking to someone in business development the other day, and they said, I was there with another individual that runs this great business, and they say, are you running your business to sell your business? Are you running your business to keep your business? And they said, well, probably to keep my business. And they said, well, the odds are it's going to fail because you're not running it to sell it. You're not running it for someone, for it to be under the constraints of having to perform. You're running it because you enjoy it. It's probably, statistically, it's probably not going to be successful.
I use the same analogy in, we always encourage our community that knowledge is power. And so whether you are thinking about that you're going to need to file a disability claim or that's part of your journey towards health, having the knowledge or running your life as is if, can only make you more successful if you don't need to.
Help me understand: are there different types of disability, different levels of disability insurances? Like, how does that work, and where does disability support come from?
Edward Dabdoub: Great question. In terms of disability payments in the United States, you really have two sources. The first is Social Security disability benefits. Those are federal benefits provided to all working Americans. As long as you've paid into the Social Security System, taxes, whatnot, you qualify. That process takes years, unfortunately.
Haylie Pomroy: Years to get granted that?
Edward Dabdoub: Well, initially the Social Security Administration, they denied the overwhelming majority of these cases. And then you have to go through this mandatory appeals process, and eventually those will get approved. They just take a really long time, sometimes two or three years. I don't focus on disability insurance on the government side, but that is one option. And what we do in the firm is we coordinate to get folks who need that type of help into the hands of someone who can help them.
In my firm, what we focus on is a second option, which is private disability insurance policies. Somebody has an insurance policy through work, or they've purchased it on their own, and they have to submit a claim to the insurance company.
Haylie Pomroy: And a lot of people don't even realize they have these policies. We had a mutual that didn't have any idea that this was even an option. And no one stepped up and said, “Hey, I know you've taken a lot of work off; how can we…” Nobody stepped in and said. Their doctor did.
Edward Dabdoub: Sometimes it's part of the benefits package at work. Nobody thinks about disability until you become disabled. It's not something you're thinking you have. But it's always worthwhile to drop in an email or reaching out to HR where you work and asking for their benefits package. Take a look at what you have.
Haylie Pomroy: Do you help people look at their benefits packages?
Edward Dabdoub: Yes. We can do that too.
Haylie Pomroy: And help identify if they have it.
Edward Dabdoub: If they have disability insurance. And one of the good things about ERISA is if you send a written request to your employer, they are required within 30 days to respond, telling you what type of insurance you have.
Haylie Pomroy: Oh, so people don't know that. Let me just make sure that I understand this. If there's somebody out there and they're struggling and they're having a hard time, it doesn't hurt to just inquire?
Edward Dabdoub: No. Send a written request to the correct person at HR, and you should get a written response.
Haylie Pomroy: And what do they ask?
Edward Dabdoub: I would suggest, well, if you're interested in disability insurance, then just outright ask, “Do I have disability insurance coverage? If I do, please provide me a copy of the insurance policy.” And by law, they are required to respond and give you that insurance policy.
Haylie Pomroy: See, I would never have thought to do that myself. I appreciate that. That's a great tip. I appreciate that you guys do the conversations with our clients, and that's why I wanted to bring you on is so that our community could have access to you. Our patients have had such tremendous relief and tremendous support from your firm, but I think that our community is really out there struggling. And so I appreciate you coming in and coming on.
Two questions. How did we start engaging with you from the Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine? Like, how did you start working with us specifically?
Edward Dabdoub: I might have only been one year out of law school, and I had a really interesting case. I was representing an attorney, and Dr. Klimas was the treating physician, and that's how we ended up connecting. And then subsequent to that case, I had a few cases with Dr. Rey, and Dr. Rey was so passionate about helping her patients. I just couldn't help but like reach out to her, and we've connected; we've stayed connected. She's extraordinarily busy, as you know.
Haylie Pomroy: I'm happy for her, and I'm sad, especially with long COVID now. I mean, all of our ME/CFS, our neurologists, our immunologists, when it started coming, they all saw this happening. I mean, I asked the head of one of our leading advocacy groups, I said, did you guys see this coming? And they said, absolutely, absolutely. And when I was traveling with all the immunologists a couple of weeks ago, they all said, this is the pandemic. The long COVID's the pandemic. It's crazy.
Edward Dabdoub: And you know what's funny? I would have thought, I'm no medical expert, but I think I know a thing or two about chronic illnesses. I would have thought I would have slowly seen a dying out of long COVID claims on the insurance side. It's not. It's almost going up. Definitely something's going on. What's interesting to me, we spoke a lot about the expertise that you guys have and the wonderful physicians and the team.
Haylie Pomroy: We're very lucky.
Edward Dabdoub: Indeed. And juxtapose that to who the insurance companies are using to review these disability claims. These physicians and nurses that are reviewing the claims or examining my clients sometimes have no training, education, or experience. They are not equipped to be handling these types of claims.
Haylie Pomroy: Even rendering an opinion.
Edward Dabdoub: No. They have no business rendering an opinion. But I sometimes wonder if the insurance companies don't do that purposely.
Haylie Pomroy: Oh, of course.
Edward Dabdoub: Because they could find the right doctors to look at it.
Haylie Pomroy: Right. Why don't they call Dr. Rey?
Edward Dabdoub: They know what Dr. Rey would say.
Haylie Pomroy: Why don't they call Dr. Irina? Or Tony Komaroff or the people that know this industry. Absolutely. That are very discerning. They don't just feel like a person has a chronic illness. They go to great lengths to run diagnostics to help identify what's going on in these patients. I mean, the identification is so important to customize and tailor the treatment. You said that very kindly. I will flat out tell you that it behooves insurance companies to not have somebody that can identify chronic systemic inflammation, ME/CFS, long COVID. And it behooves them to not have that.
I had a situation just recently. My daughter was in the hospital at UCLA. I love UCLA. I have great friends in most of the medical departments at UCLA. She had a very strange thing going on immune-wise. And they brought an infectious disease, and they're phenomenal anyway, but they're overly kind to me. They couldn't figure something out. And I have Dr. Klimas call me on her cell phone, and we page in, we're group and talking or this or that. And Dr. Klimas says, check this, this, this, this, and this. And sure, I was either going to fly her here to Florida, or she was going to phone in. I mean, that was my baby. My daughter.
And because she had that expertise, she was able to identify that. And again, they were kind to me because I have a relationship with them, but I don't even have to only imagine, I drove my daughter from a tiny hospital in Arizona, four hours in the middle of the night, to a major hospital where I have friends because of the way she and I were being treated at this tiny hospital. It was like, you're 22. You're fine. You're healthy. I wouldn't even admit you. Oh no. Now we're going to do a lumbar puncture and transport you. I mean, it was so crazy. And this isn't chronic. Our community out there, we just had a community member. We had an in-person retreat. One of our community members was saying she has this chronic autoimmune disorder and it's in full flare. And she said, the doctor said, I don't even really believe in that autoimmune disorder. And I just went, we're not talking about unicorns and rainbows.
Edward Dabdoub: I'm not surprised.
Haylie Pomroy: No, but I was just, I appreciate that you're not surprised because you're an advocate for us.
Edward Dabdoub: But good thing you had Dr. Klimas's number and speed dial. But not everybody has Klimas’ and speed dial. That's the problem.
Haylie Pomroy: That's the inequity. And that's where you guys come in to help us bridge that gap so many times for our patients. And we really genuinely appreciate that.
Edward Dabdoub: Well, it's been wonderful working with you guys also. We can't do it alone. We're lawyers, and we're not Matlock. That's a fictional character. We need the treating team to provide the medical evidence and to substantiate it.
Haylie Pomroy: Yes. But even though docs like Klimas and Rozenfeld and Reneska and Hugo that you just saw leaving here and Dr. Rey, I mean, sometimes I wonder, they're writing letters in the middle of the nights. They're superheroes as far as in this aspect of it, none of us can litigate, and none of us understand the law. I mean, we just can't.
Let me ask you another question. And so at what point, does a person have to be out of work, like not working, before they contact you?
Edward Dabdoub: No. The short answer is no. I think the sooner they call me, the better. And I think preparation is key. If they're already struggling at work, I like to tell people that the only person who can make a decision on whether you can't work, whether you're disabled, is you. You're the one that you wake up every day, you put your shoes on, you go through your daily routine to get yourself to work, and you're struggling. There's a point where deep down inside, you cannot keep doing that. That's the point you need to call me, even if you're still employed.
Haylie Pomroy: Hi, it's Haylie Pomroy, your host. When I was going through my health crisis, the worst part of it was feeling lost and alone. And I decided that I didn't want anybody else to feel as desperate as I did. That's why we set up a private membership group where you can come in, ask questions, get support, be connected with people that can actually help you on your health journey. If you go to HayliePomroy.com/member, you can join me for 30 days for free. I'll see you there. We can jump in, and we can start to organize the path for your wellness. That's HayliePomroy.com/member. I will see you there.
Now back to our show. Well, we have a community member that and she's got an amazing, she has an amazing work community. It's not that she's a bad employer or she's in a bad environment. To the point, she burned through all her vacation, all her sick pay. And then her colleagues are donating their off time, their PTOs, which is so cool of them because they're amazing. And I just said, we're having a conversation. I said, “Is there a reason why you won't entertain or talk to disability?” Like, are you looking at all of your options here? How long is this going to last? How many of your friends at work really want to give up their time with their children and their family because you're not getting supported? And she just didn't even think about it. I think she thought she was going to wait out long COVID.
Edward Dabdoub: And what is the human cost to her in continuing to push, especially with the nature of that illness?
Right. We need that bandwidth, and we need those reservoirs to change the trajectory of our health. We want them to be able to focus on their health so we can get them well. I think that's some of the gap that, or some of what we need you to bridge for us, is to get us as much of the human being to be able to be to their appointment and to be able to execute the care so we can get that person healthy. We are swamped with long COVID. I mean, I have an opinion that our clinic, our institute, our research is super primed for it because we've been leading the charge on myalgic encephalomyelitis and chronic fatigue syndrome for so long. And one of our docs said yesterday, when I was talking about having you and she said something very interesting was everybody said there's such a similarity. There's such a similarity. One of our docs said it's the same thing.
Haylie Pomroy: It's like using the term pneumonia. Pneumonia can have many different causes. Long COVID has this neuroinflammatory response and this immune modulation problem that so does ME/CFS. And it has an immune component, potentially even an autoimmune trigger component. But what's causing it, like in ME/CFS, maybe it's an environmental toxin, nuclear reactor. Maybe it's an environmental toxin like our Gulf War injury individuals. Maybe it's viral, like Epstein-Barr virus reactivation or one of the human herpes. And maybe this is COVID virus activation. We were prepped. Our practitioners were prepped. Our research was really prepped.
Edward Dabdoub: Which is wonderful for the community.
Haylie Pomroy: It is.
It's really interesting that you bring that point up because it is true. These two conditions, I think, are pretty much the same. And I'll tell you from the legal side of things, we handle it one and the same. The way we handle these cases are the same to the insurance companies. What the insurance companies tend to sometimes do is they look at these two conditions, and they say two things. One is, A, you can't prove what it is. You can't prove the label that you're giving it. And B, these are subjective symptoms for the most part. That's the argument they take. Those are two arguments we're used to receiving from insurance companies, and we know how to handle those.
Haylie Pomroy: But that's not the case at all in Germany, in France, in Italy, in Spain.
Edward Dabdoub: The United States is behind on a lot of the medical things.
Haylie Pomroy: But I think because there are more biomarkers that are coming out every day. I mean, it was not that many years ago that we could identify lupus as a specific autoimmune disorder. I mean, that's really, really recent in medicine. I got to meet the guy that identified those. Fabulous. Part of our research is creating biomarkers so that there's a definitive. We can say a person has high cholesterol, and the American Medical Association says if it's above 200, now I think it's 190, they keep lowering it. I wonder why. But they have this biomarker that says, if this, then that. More and more in the autoimmune world, people with lupus were told they were crazy for years. People with MS were told they were crazy for years. Once they started to establish a biomarker, they couldn't do that anymore. They said, if this, then this diagnosis. There are biomarkers that are coming every day that are unique for ME/CFS, long COVID, those types of neuroinflammatory things. And then what are they going to say?
Edward Dabdoub: Well, those things really help on the legal side of the case. What I have noticed is over the 20 years I've been doing this, the insurance companies, I think, purposely slow down accepting the medical evidence that has been coming out. Starts off with outright rejecting it, and then when it's hard to reject it anymore, they slowly come around to accepting it. Then the other problem is the federal judges. A lot of the federal judges have just kind of bought into the insurance company narrative on these illnesses over the years, and it takes time to untangle that. And so a lot of the times I'm in front of judges on these cases having to educate them on what the medicine looks like.
Haylie Pomroy: That brings me to why it's so important for us. We have two massive research programs right now in long COVID. I always think of it from the treatment perspective. That's my, is we do translational research . Our goal is to bring it from the bench or the lab to the bedside. How can we get treatment as quickly as possible to patients that are going to make a change in their life? You just flipped a switch, a light bulb on, which is it's critically important so that they can get the support that they need. They can get insurance. I mean, health insurance. I mean, we have individuals that because they've lost their job, they can't go to the doctors. We do a sliding scale. When do you ever hear of that? When do you hear of an immunologist, a neuroimmunologist that'll take what you can give?
Edward Dabdoub: I know. Isn't that incredible?
Haylie Pomroy: But it's terrible.
Edward Dabdoub: It is shocking though, that in the United States that most people lose their health insurance because they become disabled. Isn't that when you need your health insurance the most? I get calls from people who say, I can't keep working, but I can't stop working. I need money to put food on the table for my kids, and I need the health insurance, and all this is tied to my job. And guess what happens? They grind on, and they get worse. And it gets harder for them to get better when they actually eventually stop working.
Haylie Pomroy: Unfortunately, most of the people that walk through our office, we wish we would have saw them 2 years, 5 years, 10 years ago.
Edward Dabdoub: And I would say the same thing for most of my clients. Let's go back to what we were talking about earlier. I think it's really important to contact us early.
Haylie Pomroy: I'm going to give out your number one more time, 888-812-0393. And they can talk to somebody from your firm.
Edward Dabdoub: Or me.
Haylie Pomroy: Oh, watch it.
Edward Dabdoub: I'm still employed.
Haylie Pomroy: Eddie over here is going to spend all his time on the phone. No, we need you defending our patients. But you can start to have the conversation. I wish we were the first stop; we all do. Because we have such a mess to unravel sometimes because of the delay in individuals getting adequate care. And I'm sure you feel that that's the same thing legally.
Edward Dabdoub: It is the same thing.
People have maybe been out of a job. We have somebody that blew through their pension. Now they owe a ton of taxes. Because they didn't retain, because they were just thinking.
Edward Dabdoub: They need help. Yes. You need the help on the legal side. You need, obviously, the help on the medical side. Sometimes it's really not their fault, though. What I have seen with some of my clients is even though they've been treated with doctors, they've been bouncing around to different kinds of doctors until they find, like you guys. And sometimes that's one, one and a half years into not being well. It's not always their fault. I think sometimes it takes them a while to come around to realizing, wait, the doctors aren't figuring out what's going on with me.
They keep referring me to other types of doctors. No one's figuring it out. And then at some point, I think they start to look into it themselves.
Haylie Pomroy: And they become empowered. They have to. Because, I mean, we were saying the other day, we do all kinds of aspects of medicine: environmental medicine, nutrition, immunology, environmental medicine, integrative medicine, not because we think it's going to be fun for us to do, because that's what it takes to get our patients well. But we also need support systems. They need support. And one of the things that we love about your firm is it's you guys do: we have a philosophy, which isn't as unique, like you always say, we are more unique from a medical perspective, is you're looking at the patient's whole well-being. And I think that's really important to us.
I love your handouts. They can go to longtermdisability.net, they can download all of those. They can start looking. Our community is lifelong learners. They've had to be, not because they want to be, but because they've had to be. All of our advocacy groups and stuff, I'll make sure that they have this.
I would like to have you on with Dr. Rey and Dr. Klimas together and maybe look at some case studies that we can talk about that we've worked together. Can I get you to come back for our community?
Edward Dabdoub: Absolutely. I'd love to do that. That sounds like a great idea.
Haylie Pomroy: I think it'd be great. I'd like to, our head of veterans, I think it'd be really good too, because I know how much work you've done for all of our individuals dealing with chronic disease.
Eddie, I can't thank you enough. I know your time is extremely valuable, but I really appreciate you talking to our community. You guys, give them a call, download the information.
Hey, this is Haylie Pomroy. Right now, we're going to transition into our Q&A portion of the podcast. You'll notice that we have live viewers asking us questions. They're my Fast Metabolism members, and they get all kinds of amazing benefits, like member discounts on my world-class supplements and shakes, every product, every day, personalized guidance and support from myself and my team, and even the ability to ask questions of our podcast guests. If you have questions and want to get them answered, you should absolutely join my membership. And if you go to HayliePomroy.com/member you can join for free for 30 days. Again, that's HayliePomroy.com/member, and join for free for 30 days. I can't wait to see you there.
We are here to help individuals, but we also want to make sure that everybody has hope. Hope that there's advocacy for them. Hope that there's some relief for them. And also hope that we can have a multifaceted plan that can get them the support they need.
And we consider you a very important partner for us with that.
Edward Dabdoub: Well, thank you. The feeling is mutual. It's been like that throughout my entire career. And I want to end by saying thank you and echoing what you're saying: hope. Don't give up hope. There are people out there that know what to do to help you. Just reach out.
Haylie Pomroy: Reach out. And it's not your fault. And we're here to help.
Edward Dabdoub: That's right.
Haylie Pomroy: Awesome. We'll see you soon.
Edward Dabdoub: Thank you.
Haylie Pomroy: Thank you.
