Understanding Disability Insurance for Doctors

It’s crucial to understand the ins and outs of disability insurance for doctors. 

Failing to understand not only the purpose behind disability insurance but also the function behind it, can cause you to make costly errors in your insurance purchasing process. 

The bad news is that, sometimes, bad stuff happens. 

LeverageRX describes it like this:

“The case for physician disability insurance begins with a sobering reality: Between 25-30% of American workers will suffer a disabling event at some point in their career that prevents them from earning an income.”

The good news is that disability insurance can be extremely helpful—even for doctors who have a high income. 

In fact, doctors and physicians who make a really good income, and have achieved a high-quality lifestyle, are probably best incentivized to obtain physician’s disability insurance because they could stand to lose the most from getting injured or disabled to the point where they can no longer work and sustain their income.

In this blog post, we’re going to dive into the basics of the purpose behind disability insurance for doctors. 

We’re also going to explain some crucial and important facts that you need to know so that you can thoroughly understand it from the ground up. 

This is basic stuff—but it’s stuff that’s crucial for you to know. 

Let’s dive into it. 

1. What Is Physician’s Disability Insurance? 

Physician’s disability insurance is basically disability insurance for doctors that protects them in the event that they’re unable to work and sustain their income any longer due to some kind of injury or disability. 

As a doctor, you likely earn an above-average salary. 

However, your salary is still dependent upon you being able to deliver the high-value skills that you learned while in medical school. 

If an injury or a disability were to impede your ability to practice medicine, you could be in danger of losing your income. 

And this is where disability insurance comes in. 

If you carry disability insurance and get disabled to the point where you’re unable to work as a physician, then your insurance policy will pay out a regular, consistent wage to help sustain you—either until you get back to work, or for the period of time otherwise specified by the policy. 

There are also other elements to your policy that may be optionally available for an extra cost. 

Let’s talk about those for a minute as well. 

2. Understanding Insurance Riders 

When you’re shopping for disability insurance, you’ll probably learn that you can buy optional riders to go along with this insurance. 

For example, some policies offer an optional cost of living rider that automatically adjusts for inflation over long durations of disability payouts. 

This protects you from slowly having your lifestyle eroded by inflation in the event that you actually need to use your disability insurance to supplement your income after some kind of injury or disabling disaster. 

Obviously, the more riders you include in your insurance plan, the better.

The downside to buying too many extra riders is that they can increase the cost of your insurance premiums to such a high degree that it may become unduly expensive, especially when you take into account that you may never need the insurance. 

Of course, hopefully, the goal is to never use it. It’s just a really good idea to have it as a failsafe. 

3. Is Disability Insurance Worth The Money?

When it comes to numbers on paper, the best-case scenario is that you would never buy disability insurance, and never need it. 

Why? 

Because it costs extra. 

And ideally, you would never want to have to stop working due to a disability. 

With that being said, sometimes people do get hurt. And in such cases, there are a lot of benefits to buying disability insurance as a physician. 

It can bring peace of mind, financial safety, and a safeguard against a disabling injury or illness that would prevent you from working—and thus, keep you from practicing medicine and drawing an income.

See, even though disability insurance costs extra—that money is actually helping to protect you from potential financial disaster in the event that something bad happens to you. 

It also serves to protect your family and their peace of mind from the financial worries and anxieties that can come from reduced or eliminated wages. 

So when you think of it in these terms, disability insurance is actually really useful and definitely worth the money—especially if you can actually afford it and can make room for it in your budget. 

Conclusion 

Hopefully, this post has helped you to understand the ins and outs of disability insurance a little bit better.

And hopefully, you’ll consider picking some up if you don’t already carry it. 

Of course, as a physician, you’re probably looking on the bright side and hoping for a successful future. 

We agree!

However, it’s always better to be safe than sorry. 

And in the event that something were to go wrong, it would always be better to have the insurance in your pocket—just in case.