Medical Residents & Fellows

Protecting your income is important because your income is important. As a medical resident or fellow, disability insurance can be so much more than just protecting your current income – it’s about protecting the time/devotion to your education and training, your financial investment through tuition and student loans, and your highly anticipated future earnings potential.
Medical Residents & Fellows

Considering Coverage During Training

Important Protection

First and foremost, it’s important to note the primary benefit of securing coverage during training is that you’ll be protected if an injury or illness prevents you from working. No one ever plans for an accident, injury or concerning medical diagnosis, but it happens anyway. Let’s not forget medical residents and fellows suffer from disabling injuries and illnesses too.

Generally Better Health

With the exception of guaranteed standard issue programs, private disability insurance policies are generally medically underwritten, and an individual must be in fair health to qualify for coverage. Few medical conditions will exclude applicants from qualifying outright but many could warrant medical exclusions, a provision used by insurers to limit their exposure to specific pre-existing conditions in an insured’s medical history. Having coverage with an exclusion is better than not having coverage at all, but it is ideal to apply for coverage when one’s health doesn’t yet include any pre-existing conditions.

Lower Premiums

Disability insurance pricing is affected by age, so it’s typically less costly to secure coverage at a younger age. It is also much easier for physicians to secure discounts on their policies during residency and fellowship because discounts are more easily accessible. With select companies, the discounts available to medical residents and fellows are also greater than those available to attending physicians.

Easier Underwriting

Applying for disability insurance generally requires full medical and financial underwriting, which for many means providing tax returns, a medical history questionnaire and an in-person insurance medical exam. Although most applicants will still undergo full medical underwriting, medical residents and fellows can secure certain levels of coverage without any financial underwriting or in-person insurance medical exams. Applying during residency or fellowship can make it easier to qualify for coverage.

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Three Mistakes to Try Avoiding

Applying for disability insurance typically requires applicants to undergo medical underwriting, a process in which the insurance company reviews your entire medical history to evaluate the risk of insuring you and determine the policy terms and pricing they are willing to offer you.

Guaranteed Standard Issue (GSI) Offers simplify the application process and reduce the risk of being denied or offered modified coverage by allowing medical residents and fellows at select institutions to apply for disability insurance without having to share past health-related information. 

Best of all, GSI Offers still allow eligible medical residents and fellows to secure competitively priced and comprehensive policies including the same discounts and policy features and riders offered with non-GSI policies.

It’s easy for medical residents and fellows to discount the benefit of securing disability insurance because they feel it will be unaffordable. Budgeting can be challenging for medical residents and fellows, and we understand that finding affordable disability insurance is crucial to protecting your future without breaking the bank.

Having some coverage is better than not having any coverage at all. Although insurance companies offer medical residents up to $5,000 in monthly benefit and medical fellows up to $7,500 in monthly benefit, many insurance companies also allow policies to be initiated with as little as $2,500 in monthly benefit, while still including benefit increase riders that allow for benefit increases in future years. 

Securing a policy under Graded premiums (start out low but increase yearly), opposed to Level premiums (remain level until age 65), can reduce the initial cost of securing a policy by as much as 50-60% in some cases. This can provide significant cost savings during the initial stages of a physician’s career when income is generally lower and then allow you to switch to level premiums in later years, once attending-level earnings are reached. 

Initiating a policy with lower benefits and a graded premium is much better than not being protected at all.

Not all disability insurance policies are created equally and we feel that the process of purchasing one deserves some due diligence. A thoughtful conversation with a knowledgeable broker who’s willing to serve as an educator can help ensure you make the best decision for you.

While these policies do contain technical language and multiple moving parts, a clear explanation with context can make the important factors and differences easy to grasp, allowing consumers to make informed decisions. Focusing exclusively on pricing or relying on overly simplified spreadsheets that some brokers use can be misleading.

Important Features

We enjoy helping people with their disability insurance because we truly believe it’s important and have witnessed it’s benefits in action. That said, quality disability insurance policies can be costly, and we believe it’s important to find a balance between quality coverage and affordable premiums. Securing adequate coverage, without the extra bells and whistles, is better than not securing coverage at all because of ultra-high premiums – at least that’s our opinion. Private disability insurance policies can be customized, and we encourage consumers to learn about their options, but generally recommend the following features:
Optional riders are available for an additional premium. Some policy benefits and features are not available to all occupations.
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