For about 15 of the twenty three years I've been a paralegal, I worked in personal injury - both for plaintiffs and defense work, employed by insurance companies. As a result, I have a lot more knowledge than most people do about the insurance industry and how things work. But I was really interested in Delay Deny Defend because of recent events and because I worked in the industry. This book should be a must read for people.

Jay Feinman discusses the original purpose of the insurance industry and how that purpose was completely derailed by a shift from protecting insureds to protecting shareholders' investments. He discusses how insurance companies have changed the way adjusters do their job to the extent that they have no independent authority to settle claims. They are settled based on computer programs that tell them what the claim is worth.

Even having as much experience working in insurance as I do, I learned a lot from this book. It was highly informative and well written. While the material could be dry and boring, Feinman makes it interesting and uses real-life stories and examples to illustrates his points. This book is definitely worth reading.

Insurance is supposed to take care of policyholders. What happens when it doesn’t? How are insurance companies manipulative enough to sidestep the coverage they promise? The dark side of insurance is something all consumers should be weary of. Is your policy protected by good hands? Is your insurance carrier reminiscent of a good neighbor?

This book is a well-written exposé on the tactics, protocols, and logistics of how the insurance industry evolved into delay, deny, and defend: the standard by which insurance companies operate in today’s world. Insurance companies delay paying out what policyholder’s are owed, deny coverage and wrongdoing, and defend their lowball offers and loopholes in court, where the average American cannot pay.

As someone who has personally been through difficult situations with my health and my health insurance, I knew going into this book that insurance constantly disappoints its customers. But I had no idea how awful the underbelly of this industry is.

I learned a lot of detailed information from the author, who constantly references real life cases and his resources. I could see that the average reader might be intimidated by a lot of the jargon from court and lawyers, but I still feel like I got a lot out of this despite not being able to follow all of the legal and financial information.

I was truly blown away to see how making insurance a for-profit industry has affected so many people negatively. The tactics, algorithms that have no soul, and litigation that bleeds Americans dry just hurts to read.

I am now a more knowledgeable consumer. The last part of the book makes a lot of recommendations to help you avoid being screwed over.

I researched the cultural context of this book after I read it, and I was surprised to see that this book was written almost 15 years ago. I imagine things have already gotten worse since then. This book has become larger than life in regard to the Insurance CEO killer case.

The narrator did a good job at clearly conveying legal, medical, and political jargon.

I was gifted this book as a courtesy in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media.

"Insurance doesn't work when companies "Delay, Deny, Defend."

The perspective of this book is self-identified as pro-consumer, but not anti-insurance company, and that rings true. As it says, insurance is hypothetically (and sometimes practically) the safeguard against individual liability in the face of disaster, for the middle class. However, insurance companies prioritizing unthinkable profit over the customers they exist to protect has become a huge problem. This book does a great job of highlighting where things went wrong and both the broad and specific implications of insurance companies operating in this way. But honestly, nothing in this book shocked me more than learning that before the 1990s, insurance companies operated in such a way that would lead one to believe that they worked for the good of their customers. If only that world still existed.

Overall, I learned to be true a lot that I think we all suspect. This book could've been shorter as it was a bit repetitive, but I learned from it nonetheless!

Also, the narrator of this book did a great job. He was incredibly clear and for those that like to listen to audiobooks sped-up, it's perfect.

Working in the insurance industry for over a decade, I went into this concerned about the narrative purely villainizing companies. Many of which, I honestly believe are trying to do the right thing (at least the vast majority of the time.). I thought this book did a great job at outlining specific examples of where things went very wrong for consumers. Whether it was due to poor policies at companies or just general mishandling. It’s true that claims are mishandled. On the narration side, I did notice a few mispronunciations of carriers (Allianz and Amica come to mind).

This book isn’t quite the incendiary manifesto you probably think it is; but the systemic abuses and greed it outlines, in surprisingly restrained prose, are no less shocking for that.

Yes, like 98% of Americans I am only aware of this book for the same reason you are. The news. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, a manifesto? Muckraking journalism? A corporate expose à la The Big Short? The answer, it turns out, is none of the above and yet somehow more than I bargained for.

The tone and style of this book is about as radical as a quarterly corporate memo, but the subject matter is the stuff of middle class America’s nightmares. The author details with excruciating precision the trends and practices that, since the 90’s, have made not paying out insurance claims a default matter of industry policy. The book makes use of specific examples like All State and Farmers, but also points out the national spread of these practices. Despite its relative brevity, this book is dense and there genuinely is too much to even summarize here. To give you an idea, here are a few topics covered in these chapters.

Insurance companies waiting out or legally harassing claimants, sometimes for years, until they settle for less than they’re owed. The industry wide practice of replacing experienced human insurance adjusters with biased computer programs primed to benefit the company over the policyholder. Denying coverage based on arcane, disingenuous or blatantly absurd interpretations of policies and the facts of the case (seriously, the chapter on hurricane Katrina will absolutely make your blood boil). These are just a few of the many ways the insurance industry as a whole has gotten harder to navigate, more predatory, and in a word, worse for the consumer.

Always informative, occasionally overwhelming, Delay, Deny, Defend describes in aggregate and in individual cases, abject human suffering with all the reserve of an office email thread. The effect is at times jarring but I can understand the reasoning behind it and it’s still an infuriating, emotional, book for all its civility. Everyone affected by insurance of some kind (and that is to say, basically everyone) owes it to themselves to read this and other books like it.

this book is going to make you angry. this book made me angry.

i'm no stranger to having to fight insurance companies, but reading specific instances in which insurance companies go great lengths to not pay out valid claims.

example: progressive wanted to prove that a woman's claim was invalid. so they SENT PEOPLE INTO HER CHURCH TO SPY ON HER.

probably one of the most insane stories in this book is about what happened in new orleans post-katrina. (did you know some katrina litigation is still ongoing?) insurers classify hurricane damage as wind damage. water damage specifically wasn't covered under these claims. so for the people that had their homes "slabbed" (this is a term that i've learned means the house has been completely wiped away) insurance claims were denied because... there was no proof that the house wasn't water damaged. BECAUSE THE HOUSE NO LONGER EXISTED.

in a world where i'm constantly seeing social media threads crowdfunding for cash to pay for medical care because people's coverage somehow runs out and they need medication to live or threads where coverage finally gets approved only after a patient has died, well.

all i'm going to say is that this book will radicalize you. and you should read this book because they don't want you to.

Honestly, took interest in this book after recent events. I really enjoyed this overall. This book gives a great overview of how insurance companies run, from understanding how they make profit to the math behind premiums. The book does not smash the entire need of insurance, but a good critique on what companies can do to improve. As a consumer, this is a great resource to help you see how you can advocate for yourself.

Simply an amazing and eye-opening exposé of the bastardization of the insurance industry. I knew this book was going to make me very angry, but I needed to know. Now I do, and yes, I'm furious. Informed, but furious. I'm so glad I got the very well narrated audiobook version, because a hardcopy would have been thrown across the room multiple times.

In Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It, Feinman shows us the humble beginnings of insurance some 300 years ago in "contributorships", where a group of people would create a fund to serve the community should a catastrophe happen that affects and might overwhelm them all. He then walks us through the changes that happened over the decades and and centuries, where fatefully everyone's least favorite consulting company, The McKinsey Group, showed insurers that it shouldn't be about the insured, it should be about MAKING ALL THE MONEY. That's where it all went bad, really really bad. Some might even call it corrupt.

Now we're required to have all these policies that, by design, are never going to cover what is intended, thanks to McKinsey's manipulations. People cringe at the idea of putting in an insurance claim, because no one wants to endure the inevitable fight for what should be readily provided. Huge computer systems are created to "evaluate" claims and protect the insurance company's interests, never the insured. It's infuriating to hear how complex the system is and how impossible they've made it for the Everyman to simply survive a catastrophe by using their insurance. (Originally published in 2010, this book does not cover recent AI additions to slimy corporate tactics, but here's hoping for a 15-year update in the works to understand just how much worse things have gotten in the age of AI.)

The bottom line is that, the spirit of a contributorship has been lost to corporate greed. Despite regulations to prevent bad faith treatment of the claimants, insurance agencies have become FOR PROFIT companies whose focus has moved from ensuring protection of the insured to unadulterated greed, plain and simple. Literally anyone who's had to make an insurance claim -- medical, household, car -- knows at best they will get lowballed, and at worst has to prepare to fight in court, perhaps for years, for the coverage they have in good faith been paying for.

With all the political uproar going on in the world today, I find it oddly comforting that the tactics of Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It are one thing we all seem to agree are offensive and unethical. United in our hatred of the wrongdoings, one might say. For that reason, I do believe this is one book everyone should read, and soon.

my reasons for reading this book are the same as everyone else's, i guess, but there's something extremely maddenning to realize that the only respite is to lawyer up. but it's also infuriating that insurance companies say you shouldn't? anyway, i was pissed throughout.
since this is a new audiobook, i would have appreciated an author's note of sorts at the beginning or at the end talking about how things have changed since the book's publication 15 years ago (2010 was 15 years ago? let's open up that coffin, yikes).
i must add that the audiobook narration was top-notch!

I don’t know how these people sleep at night. Are we really that easily bought, that we would take advantage of people, in the lowest point of their lives, just for the money?

Did I <i>know</i> any of the facts presented in this book? No. Did I <i>suspect</i>? Absolutely. So, was I surprised? No. And for that reason I personally found this book kind of boring. None of it was a jaw dropping, smoking gun in my opinion. It reads like a textbook and I don’t feel like the scope of the story went deep enough. Sure, the book presents this as a systemic problem, but I don’t think it goes far enough.

Many of the examples are accident and injury claims or natural disaster claims. I used to work in oncology, and I dealt with health insurance. I kid you not, I had an insurance company tell me a patients MRI wasn’t “urgent” because they were already diagnosed with cancer. Aka it would be cheaper for the company to delay care and let the patient die than it would be to treat the patient. Another patient was out of network(OON) with our providers, but she needed a specialist and the next closest one was 400 miles away. I was able to call the insurance and get an OON exemption. After her life saving surgery, she received a $500k bill in the mail. This one was actually the fault of my hospital. They saw her insurance was OON and didn’t bother to double check my authorization. When she called the billing department they accused her of lying. I had to call the billing department for her, in order for her to be believed, and other people in my position might have told her “that’s not my job”(she’s also lucky she called when she did, because it was my last week there and I doubt anyone would’ve been able to help her if I was gone). I’ve seen doctors bill as many codes as they possibly could, just to milk insurance companies for more money, only for the patient to get left with the bill when insurance denies it. This problem is so much deeper than having a few claims adjusters in your pocket. That’s the only reason I was disappointed in the lack of depth in this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the opportunity to listen to the audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claim and What You Can Do About It

This book is as upsetting as it is empowering.

Feinman pulls back the curtain on the shady tactics insurance companies use to avoid paying claims, revealing a system designed to protect profits over people.

Reading this in the wake of the California fires was particularly enraging, as it highlights how these companies often exploit legal loopholes to evade payouts when people need help the most.

Feinman doesn’t just expose the corruption—he arms readers with practical strategies to fight back.
From understanding your rights to knowing when to lawyer up, this book is packed with actionable advice on holding insurers accountable.

I especially appreciated the real-world case studies of major wins and devastating losses.

These stories show the background of these legal battles, showing just how high the stakes can be.

I have a soft spot for books that inspire people to stand up against injustice and greed, and this one delivered.
This book is a prime example of consumer empowerment and a powerful protest against corporate corruption.

If you want to be prepared before disaster strikes—or if you're currently fighting with an insurance company—this is essential reading.

Highly recommended.

4.7/5

Given recent events, I was interested when I saw the ARC of the audio version of this book was available. Even though this book was written a long time ago, it makes sense that they would want to capitalize on new interest by releasing this book in audio form. One big surprise for me was that this book did not discuss health insurance at all. It was exclusively about home insurance and car insurance. Also, given how long ago the book was written, some of the nitty gritty details were quite dated, but the overarching themes still seemed quite relevant.

The book was very easy to understand and specific to the audio narration, the narrator was very good. Even the parts of the book that were rather dense never felt like they were too complicated of subject matter or that I was not comprehending. On the flip side, the book was rather repetitive. While this helped drive points home, it was a little aggravating.

Now one of my biggest complaints was the percentage of the book that was devoted to HOW companies are corrupt and WHAT you can do about it. It wasn’t until about 80% into the book where we finally got a chapter devoted solely to how to combat corruption when dealing with a home or auto insurance claim. The rest of the book prior was examples of how insurances companies are corrupt.

Overall I found the book to be interesting, yet frustrating.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest rating and review.

I picked this up because of the recent shooting of the United Healthcare CEO, the reaction surrounding his death, and the general positive public opinion of his murderer. According to reports, three bullets with "Delay, Deny, Depose" were left at the scene and is probably a reference to the practice of delay, deny, defend that insurance companies use to get out of paying for customer insurance claims. At the time, I was somewhat surprised by the overwhelmingly unified response to Luigi Mangione and the almost gleeful reaction to the news of Brian Thompson's death. I wanted to read Delay, Deny, Defend to get more of an informational understanding of the insurance industry.

First, it must be stated that this book is not a new publication. It was originally published in 2010 and the information within covers industry practices and legislation up until around 2009. I think it would be interesting to read an updated version if only to find out what, if any, changes have happened in the industry since then. I started Delay, Deny, Defend in ebook format and moved to the eaudio copy provided by NetGalley. I personally found the audiobook easier to digest. There's a lot of information here about various regulations, procedures, historical events, and etc. Some of this information is written in a repetitive manner, but overall I liked the very direct way information is presented.

In terms of relevancy, the publication date shouldn't be ignored, but I also think there's some timeless value is the specific case studies and historical data presented. Many times throughout the book I kept remembering times I have dealt with an insurance company and the tactic of Delay, Deny, Defend. The level of frustration, time, and effort it takes to deal with an insurance company sometimes is exasperating at best. I could certainly empathize with many of the claimants written about.

This is obviously a very niche and timely topic and I am glad that there's a more accessible audiobook now. While I found "Delay, Deny, Defend" interesting, it's probably a hard sell for anyone not interested in the shooting mentioned above or people in the insurance industry. The information can be quite dense at time. I found it well presented.

For obvious reasons, I read this book because of recent events. I was not surprised to see this book getting an audio edition in 2025, despite the book being originally published in 2010. That being said, the book and its information is dated, so I would say that this book is not as relevant as it used to be. This book is written in a dense, matter-of-fact way, and it's not the most entertaining listen. Also, once you are told the basics of the author's thesis in the first chapter, it gets fairly repetitive. If you already had a bad view of insurance companies, this will only reinforce that view, and it's not really that interesting of a read. This would have been a better opinion piece than a book, in my opinion.

If you’ve ever had to fight tooth and nail with an insurance company over a claim, this book will make your blood boil. Jay M. Feinman exposes the dark side of the insurance industry, showing how companies prioritize profits over people by delaying payouts, denying valid claims, and aggressively defending against policyholders.

✔ Eye-opening case studies of real-life insurance battles
✔ Breaks down shady industry tactics with clarity
✔ Practical advice on how to protect yourself

This isn’t just a dry policy analysis—it’s an infuriating yet essential read for anyone who has home, auto, or health insurance (so… basically everyone). Highly recommended if you want to understand the system and learn how to fight back.

(4.0 Stars)

This was very informative and exhaustive... unfortunately, it was also exhausting! And that is not because the book isn't good. The book is very good and it really makes you think, and more aware. There is corporate greed, and collusion against us, the consumers, the people.

The narration was good and well-paced. The book is broken up into easily digestible segments. In addition to the atrocities there are helpful resources, tips to aid you in getting the most from insurance coverage and claims should you need it.

Every American should read this.

I didn't realize how old this book was. The insurance landscape has dramatically changed since this was written, therefore I will not be reading this title.