Reprints Online

How do you judge the best Disability Insurance? First, the simple answer:

1. Which company is financially strongest?

2. Which policy will pay the most in the most different claims scenarios?

The first thing that one hears about disability insurance is: Get an "Own occupation" definition of disability and even more importantly, for physician disability insurance, get a policy that further defines occupation as your specialty.

But is this the only factor? You can have a policy that has an own occupation definition but is weak in other areas. An important and overlooked area is that of recovery benefits. This is crucial as the majority of people who receive benefits from their policies do go back to work and mostly back to the occupation or specialty that they were involved with before the disability.

So, what happens when one is released from care and back to work? Well, that depends on the company and policy. One company has a good long term occupation definition of disability but says that when you return to work and are released from care and are no longer impaired your benefits end with a 4 month payment for recovery.

A question is: How long will it take to get back to 100% income, even if well, after being out of the loop for one, two, three years or more? Is there a chance that it will never get back?

The right alternative is a disability insurance policy with recovery benefits to age 65. What happens here? In the same set of circumstances as above you go back to work with no impairment but no income as you build back your business. Your claim continues at 100%. A year later your income is still only 40% of pre-disability income. What do you get? 60% of your insurance benefit. Two years later you get up to 50% of pre-disability income. What do you receive from your policy? 50% of your monthly disability insurance benefit?

In this last example, what if you never get above 50% of pre-disability benefit yet you no longer have the impairment? With one policy you would have received a 4-month "recovery benefit." With the other you'd continue receiving benefits. It's an important part of your choice of disability insurance policies.

About the Author

Author, Neil Willner, owner of ProtectYourIncome.com, Disability Insurance Online, provider of disability insurance quotes and information, writes articles on disability insurance for ProtectYourIncome.com. For more information, visit www.ProtectYourIncome.com. Author, Richard Reich, writes articles on disability insurance for ProtectYourIncome.com - Disability Insurance Online, an online source for disability insurance quotes and information. Fo