In a post and open email to the American Diabetes Association last year I voiced my disgust with them that ““I have attempted in the past to share information about how diabetes impacts a person’s ability to get life insurance and what it takes and how a person can find affordable life insurance rates with a history of type 1 or type 2 diabetes.

I am struck by the lack of information provided by the ADA website on this challenge. Life insurance is mentioned more often in the context of planned giving to the ADA than it is as an everyday need for people and families dealing with diabetes.”

At that point the only thing referencing life insurance and how to obtain it was this was a three paragraph word salad that provided absolutely nothing helpful.

My email continued, “The only page you have that goes into life insurance at all, is less than informative, and at least in the first few sentences, inaccurate and misleading. I suspect a lot of people, if they can even find that page, are turned off and don’t read the entire article. If they do read the entire article, they certainly don’t have a clue where to go from there.

I have been treated rudely and unprofessionally by your staff in my attempts to provide useful information in this arena in the past. I would like to believe that there is a way to get valuable information on to your website, information that positively impacts your member’s everyday lives.

Is it possible to speak to someone about how we might collaborate to provide real, insightful, valuable information to those that face the challenge of protecting their family and/or doing planned giving through life insurance when diabetes stands between them and doing those things affordably?”

I was never contacted. In updating links to past posts today I discovered that the ADA has now rounded out their life insurance information page with at least some of the information that I had attempted to post on their forum. It was deleted from their forum but apparently not thrown away. I would top short of calling it plagiarism, but heck, that’s what it is. While still incomplete, the fact that they took some of the information and added it is a step in the right direction.

Bottom line. I love the way this self proclaimed advocate for those with diabetes kind of wrapped things up by saying, “Becoming your own advocate will help you to find a life insurance policy that best fits your needs.” They really need to step up and do the job. It would not be a monumental task for them, and certainly not damaging to their integrity if they just listed links to 15 or 20 agents or agencies, or 100 of them that have a reputation for getting the job done right.