There’s no other occupation that is more interested in and buys more disability insurance than physicians. Why? There are several factors. First: Physicians are unique among higher earners in that a doctor depends almost completely on his or her skills, without delegation, in order to make income. Without delegation is a key phrase. A business person can delegate a fair amount of what they do through their employees. A physician can’t delegate medical procedures to someone else on the organization chart. This is also true for other personal service businesses such as dentists and to some degree, attorneys. Second: Physicians have a strong reality on the effect of illness and accident. They see this every day. When you see and understand the effects of sickness and accidents, you want to insure against that possible reality in one’s own life. Learn more at physician disability insurance and if you’re a medical resident or medical student check for info on medical resident disability insurance.

If ever there was an “important” kind of insurance, it’s disability insurance. One’s ability to earn an income is usually one’s largest asset. It’s not fun to think about but what would you do if your income stopped? You and those who depend on you would have some serious difficulties. You should insure your life and take care of the disability possibility as well. It’s even more statistically likely to have a long term disability. It’s almost twice as likely that a 40 year old would have a long term disability than dying before age 65. Please get disability insurance, it’s important. If you don’t get it through us at protectyourincome.com, please do get it from someone.

There are different ways that insurance companies use to define what disability is. There also is misinformation on the topic. We’ll try to help you sort that out. First there’s the “pure” own occupation of disability. This definition, in essence, says that if you can’t perform the duties of your occupation (what you were doing before you were disabled) then you receive the benefit, even if you’re at work in another occupation. This is the most favorable definition. At the other end of the spectrun is what may be called the income definition. This says that you receive benefits if you lose income because of disability and are not at work in any occupation. Any income you make from another or the same occupation reduces your benefit. There are also “in betweeners” such as modified own occupation, transitional own occupation and pure own occupation definitions that last for a period of time such as 5 years and then switch to another method. Seems complicated but we’ll help you sort it out here in the blog, on the protectyourincome.com site or you can contact us to go over it in detail.

Here’s an analogy which answers that question: You’re faced with having to deposit a good part of your future earnings in a financial institution to be held in trust for you in case you can’t work because of disability. What kind of institution do you want to hold those funds? Obviously, one that is as financially strong as possible. The quickest way to check on an insurance company’s financial strength is to check their financial strength ratings as published by the independent analysts. There’s a lot of emphasis on the fine differences in the definitions of disability in a disability insurance policy, along with pricing and rightly so but one has to look closely as well at the financial strength of the financial institution which is “holding your future income.” We’ll go over the different financial analysts that rate the disability insurance companies in a future post. If you need to look up any life or disability insurance company’s ratings you can call us toll free at 866-691-0100. We have access to all the insurance companies’ ratings.

The first area of concern for most professionals looking for disability insurance is usually the definition of disability. The question asked is: “Does it cover me if I can’t do the duties of a ______(one’s occupation)? ” This is a key question and you do want an “own occupation” policy. Even better, if you’re a physician or a specialty dentist, you want a definition that defines your occupation as your specialty. We’ll talk more about own occupation disability definitions in an upcoming post. One should also differentiate among disability insurance policies on the residual or recovery benefit or what can be called generically “the return to work benefit.” What happens to the insurance benefit if one recovers from a disability and goes back to work? Some policies use a time and duties test. The more favorable ones use an income definition. Here’s an example: If you’re a doctor and you return full time to work, are you going to have an income equal to your prior income right away? Probably not, it will take time to build up. Even if one had a full patient load right away, the cash flow would take time to start coming in. If you were back full time, a time and duties definition of residual disability would say that you’re recovered, you’re back to work and benefits end even though you may still have an ongoing complete or partial income loss. An income definition would continue to pay you the pro rata amount of your policy (or all of it) in relation to what you actually earn. So, you can be back full time at work and building back your business and receiving benefits. One may never get their full income back and with an income method, benefits would continue until you get to 80% of prior income. Benefits would have been long gone in a time and duties definition. Look for the better residual/recovery benefit in a disability insurance policy. You can find those from the disability insurance experts at the Protectyourincome.com web site.

It’s always interesting to me to see statistics regarding disability . Follow the link to this chart that shows the likelihood of a long term disability as compared to someone dying at different ages. Most people with families think about life insurance and rightly so but except for physicians, dentists and other medical professionals, we find that for most people there is more attention on life insurance than on insuring for loss of income . Interestingly, when someone does become aware of the statistics and realities of disability they want to find out how they can insure what is usually their biggest asset - their ability to earn an income.

Guardian Life’s disability insurance policy remains as our most popular disability policy. In most states it is issued through Berkshire Life which is a 100% owned subsidiary of Guardian (all states except California). Guardian is especially popular with physicians. Among the reasons cited are the overall quality of the definitions of disability along with Guardian’s size and financial strength.