Disability Insurance

Has anybody taken out extra disability insurance (as in a separate plan to what’s offered/mandated through your residency program)? It was suggested to me by an outside source that I should, because disability insurance is changing and becoming harder to obtain esp. for orthopedic surgeons. Any thoughts?

you should definitely try and insure yourself in residency with own occupation disability. if you are healthy, it is really cheap. also, you can raise your coverage when you are an attending without getting another physical. the stuff that your residency covers is crap if you really get diabled.

Thanks BoneBlaster for the quick reply. Is this not something that's usually offered again when you join a group for example?

Getting a good disabiilty policy is one of the most important things you can do in my opinion. It is well worth the money to get the best policy with the strictest definition of "disabled". Only a couple of companies offer true "own occupation" policies to orthopedic surgeons. The one I just got says that if I cannot perform the normal duties of an ORTHOPEDIC SURGEON (note, not the duties of a PHYSICIAN, where they could argue you could retrain as a radiologist if you cut your hand off for example) I would be considered completely disabled and get my full benefit amount EVEN IF I COULD WORK FULL TIME DOING SOMETHING ELSE, even another field of medicine or non operative ortho.

Also, individual policies (vs group or institution) distribute your benefits income tax free whereas a policy a group or residency buys for you gets taxed as regular income.

One last thing is that if you have a pre-existing individual policy you can stack a group policy on top of it to get a bigger benefit amount than if you wait to get an individual policy until after you sign with a group and get their group policy first.
For example, I have a 3000/mo benefit policy with the option to increase that up to 12500/mo once I make enough money to justify that amount (I am still a fellow) They will usually only give you the equivalent of ~60% of you income. Obviously i would have to start paying higher premiums if I increase it but I have locked in my current risk category and level of good health (before my BP. cholesterol, vision, etc etc get worse or I have an accident). Also, they cannot change their definition of own occupation and cant cancel the policy if I am up to date paying.



here are some good links
www.physiciansnews.com/finance/501.html
www.disabilityquotes.com/occupat ... icians.cfm

I would be glad to send you my agents email. She works with most of the orthopods in our community and knows our needs and really helped me understand all this stuff, b/c I was freaking clueless when i started but now I have a great policy that will protect me and my family. Ask Orthopod which is more important, life or disability insurance and see what they say.
[url=mailto]chriswisemd@hotmail.com[/url]

Get as much future increase option as you can. It will suck paying extra for it, but it will be worth it down the road.

I am very thankful for all of your helpful replies... I had sought some advice on this from an agent a while back. Now, I have a MetLife policy in front of me and it does not have a true "own occupation" clause. I am glad I asked before paying any premiums.