Disability insurance

[testingtest]

During residency, does the majority of residents take additional disability insurance?

Do you recommend residents to pay for additional disability insurance?

It is quite costly, and frankly I don't know if I need it.

Edit: I am talking about additional disability insurance (ie on top of what your provincial resident association is offering to all residents).

Edit 2 : some companies are offering high monthly benefits (eg 4000$/month). Is there a limit on the amount of private disability insurance you can have if you have DI through the provincial resident association?

[LostLamb]

Buy everything you can get on top of what you get through residency union. If you're still a med student buy the guaranteed insurability riders that permit increases and avoid medical at each "anniversary" aka graduation, every age that ends in 5 or 0,  marriage, childbirth, etc.

In AB it maxes out at 4000$ per month between para and extra bought from the AMA insurance broker. That is less than what you get as r3.

Some people signed on with RBC, but I have heard some nightmares getting the disability later.

Truly...you can't predict the future, you need to protect yourself to the best of your ability. Don't take your health for granted.

Also, do the same with life insurance (buy the rider that guarantees insurability and increases without medical).

Of all the presentations I got from those groups trying to make money off of us, I think buying the extra riders was the best advice I got. I couldn't predict my health status' changes.

 

 

[sart11]

Is there any significant benefit to signing up for disability insurance beyond what's offered by your residency association (ie PARO)? PARO states they'll pay out 70% of your salary in case of disability (comes out to~$3500 disability coverage in Ontario). If I understand correctly, your max coverage is $4000 in Ontario so not a significant improvement with OMA/RBC/whichever company on what you're already getting for free. And once you want to up your coverage to come closer to your attending salary, you'll pay the rate for your age at that time so there's no benefit for buying into a plan when you're younger and healthier.

Is there any aspect of this that I'm missing? 

[QuestionsAbound]

You don’t need a medical if you sign up at the end of medical school, and can increase your coverage without a medical thereafter for most plans. If you wait you will likely need a medical.

[polarbear89]

21 hours ago, sart11 said:

Is there any significant benefit to signing up for disability insurance beyond what's offered by your residency association (ie PARO)? PARO states they'll pay out 70% of your salary in case of disability (comes out to~$3500 disability coverage in Ontario). If I understand correctly, your max coverage is $4000 in Ontario so not a significant improvement with OMA/RBC/whichever company on what you're already getting for free. And once you want to up your coverage to come closer to your attending salary, you'll pay the rate for your age at that time so there's no benefit for buying into a plan when you're younger and healthier.

Is there any aspect of this that I'm missing? 

I'm not sure. I've just had my PARO insurance thus far through residency. I was looking into buying OMA insurance but I can't seem to figure out why it would make sense to get that now or to just wait to buy once I'm a staff and no longer covered my PARO.

[ellorie]

One reason that it makes sense is that you could develop a disability or chronic medical condition literally tomorrow - and even if you have coverage now, if it's something that doesn't disable you right away, when you attempt to get DI later you will be faced with a policy that is extremely expensive and/or excludes coverage related to the things that are most likely to disable you.

In particular, a fair number of residents experience mental illness or at least would benefit from some kind of mental health care, and once you have that in your history, if you try to get DI that requires a medical, you will end up with DI that likely excludes one of the biggest categories of things that disables doctors.

In Ontario you can get the OMA Essentials offer when you finish with no medical, so you can certainly plan to get that no matter what happens.

But I personally am not a fan of the unknown - things, plans, and offers change, practice plans change, and if you're still a resident you have no idea what will be on offer at the time when you graduate (though the OMA deal seems pretty durable overall).  For example, you used to be able to get RBC in medical school with no medical questions - now they ask about mental health history.

In my mind, you want to get the best no-medical policy you can as early as you can get it.  I got mine through RBC in medical school back before they asked about mental illness (they now do, which is straight up bullshit) and I'm keeping it forever.

[blah1234]

Get gold plated disability insurance. You never know what could happen and I know of colleagues who ran into issues early in their career and now they have no safety net. It's something I'm happy to pay for to ensure that my family and I have peace of mind.

[F508]

Purpose of getting disability insurance earlier is to lock in an insurer/lower rate before developing medical issues. Depends on your age, your residency length, debt/dependents and risk tolerance. Since my residency was only two years and I'm young, I didn't get one after medical school since it was provided by my provincial residency association. I figured it would be low likelihood that I would develop something and was willing to take the risk (Worked out for me in the end.. but I know, I know, you can never predict if something happens.). As long as you buy a disability insurance within 6m of graduating as a resident, you benefit from no medical and similar discounts from RBC.

[BigM]

As others have said, get the disability insurance, max out the most you can get.  Your future earnings are your most valuable asset. Illnesses happen all the time and physicians are certainly not immune to them.  You don't want to be stuck trying to get by on government disability programs and trying to pay off student loans.