Blogger takes on insurance firm

LAWRENCE SMITH/Sunday Star-Times

BLOG HARD: Controversial blogger Cameron Slater is struggling to convince his insurance company he is clinically depressed.

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A controversial blogger is struggling to convince his insurance company he is clinically depressed in order for the policy he depends on for his livelihood to be reinstated.

Cameron Slater, who writes a right-wing blog under the name Whale Oil, has received about $100,000 a year under an income protection insurance policy, due to depression he claims has left him unable to work since the collapse of a business five years ago.

Despite his condition, Slater has spent the last four years developing his blog, pouring his energies into the project fulltime. But two months ago his insurance company, Fidelity Life Assurance, cut off his benefits, saying their specialists had determined he was no longer unfit to work.

"They sent me to see three of their specialists under the pretence I might have an underlying head injury. Of course I don't. The reports said that, so they considered the claim to be 'medically concluded'," he said. "That's the opinions they've paid for. Of course my specialists don't agree.

"But in the meantime they've cut me off completely."

Fidelity Life had offered him $50,000 to conclude the policy, but Slater said he had engaged a lawyer and was going to seek a full settlement.

"It's a matter of whether or not I have to sell my house, whether my marriage lasts when there's no money, and all the rest of it. It's a whole bunch of hurt. But I'm one of those people who never gives in. If it takes me five years I'll do it."

The Auckland father-of-two said his profile as a blogger had probably contributed to the situation.

But despite the obvious hours he put into his blog, he said he remained unable to work in a regular environment.

His recent engagement covering the Tua-Cameron boxing bout on Twitter had left him shattered the next day.

"I can put on a good face but the next day I'm a wreck."

Slater's GP recently increased his medication to help him get through the "bad patch" caused by the insurance situation.

It rankled with the National Party activist, son of a former party president, to be a beneficiary of the welfare state to which he was ideologically opposed.

He said that for confirmation of his mental health status, his insurance company needed to only look as far as a Facebook group which had 82 members, including a number of MPs, called "People who think Cam Slater is nuts".

"Even my enemies say so," he said.

A spokesman for Fidelity Life said the company could not comment.

- © Fairfax NZ News