Disability Insurance Simplified for Medical Students & Residents (Canada)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- UofT Medicine lecture comparing group and individual disability insurance plans for the graduating medical student or resident. Download the spreadsheet and calculate which one is more worth it for you: drive.google.com/file/d/1fhjX...
Topics Covered:
0:00 - Intro
1:12 - 1) Should I get disability insurance?
4:22 - 2) Group vs Individual Plans, Buzzwords to know
11:25 - 3) What to watch out for
14:44 - 4) Case study & Comparison
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Or if you are an instructor who would like to access my lecture slides, please email at breakingbaddebt@gmail.com.
Disclosures: There are no conflicts of interest to disclose. These slides are for education purposes only. Any information, views, and opinions expressed are solely those of the presenter and are not a substitute for financial advice specific to your personal situation.
*Correction: In 21:00 I meant to say hundred, not thousand ^-^
UPDATE: There has been a lot of questions that were commonly asked through social media and email, here are the responses & resources:
1) OWN OCCUPATION vs REGULAR OCCUPATION vs ANY OCCUPATION?
This is a good article clarifying the utility of Own Occupation from the OMA: www.nlma.nl.ca/nexus/issues/fall_2007/inserts/insert_1.pdf
- Own occupation means that if you can't perform the duties of your regular occupation (i.e. surgery) but switch into another occupation (i.e. teaching, or family medicine), you would still get the full amount you are insured for, on top of the income you're making in the other occupation.
- E.g.: If the surgeon is insured for $20K/month and retrains in family med and now earns $15K/month, they would get the full payout of the $20K and not only the $5K difference. Therefore, total monthly pay would be $35K.
- Regular occupation: If you switch to another occupation you get the insurance payout subtract the new monthly income you're making in your other occupation.
- E.g.: Using the numbers from the above example - the surgeon would only get $5K insurance payout/month for a total monthly income of $20K.
- Something to ask your insurance broker about is: if you can no longer perform surgery but do more clinic instead - you might make less than when you did surgery, but you are still doing the same occupation just with different duties - you might not get the own occupation payout because you're still doing the same occupation.
- Most medical insurance plans offer Regular Occupation by default. Any occupation means that if you can no longer be a doctor, you might be asked to do any job (common example used by brokers is stocking shelves or flipping burgers), check with your insurance provider that you're getting Regular and not Any occupation.
- Getting Own Occupation tends to add 10-25% additional cost to your monthly premium.
2) SPLITTING BETWEEN STEP + LEVEL RATES?
- There are some residents who get $3000 step rate and $500 level rate (splitting between 2 different insurance providers). The purpose behind that is to have cheaper insurance rates while you're still a resident but also still have the option of transitioning to a level rate (provided you got the FIO rider with the $500 insurance) as you become staff without having to do medical testing for the other level rate provider. Step rates tend to become more expensive than level rate as you get older, hence the transition to the level rate.
- This is a good "middle ground" option - the benefit is that if one provider doesn't cover a condition, the other one can fill in. The downside is that you have to make claims with 2 different companies, which can add to the complexity/ it's more work.
- Keep in mind that the total insurance coverage between the two companies can't exceed your expected post-tax income. For example, if you're only making $10K / month post tax - you can't "double dip" by getting 10K /mth insurance from Company 1 and 10K from Company 2. The companies do communicate with each other and you have to disclose if you're also getting insurance coverage from another company.
Hope this helps - watch this space for more updates on commonly asked questions!
Thanks for the great video! Would you be able to share the PDF which correlates actual income with recommended disability income? I can't find it in your Google Sheet file. Thanks!
Hi Frederick, here is the link: www.omainsurance.com/Products/Product%20Documents/Resource-Disability-IncomeBenefitGuide.pdf
What are the thoughts about Professional Overhead Expense coverage for FM? If I am on the contract, do I have to pay overheads during disability?
It would depend on the contract. Some contracts will say that you'll be responsible for paying OH even if disabled, so if that's in the contract, might be worth considering OH insurance.
Thanks, this was very informative! Two questions:
1) In the case study, why did the FM resident choose the Own Occupation disability coverage option? If I am going into a less technically demanding specialty, what other things should I be considering when deciding whether to choose this option?
2) This presentation only compares group step rates vs. private level rates. Out of curiosity, did you also look into group level and private step options and if so, what were your thoughts?
Hi Kaysuey, this is an excellent question! 1) Own Occupation seems the most relevant for procedural specialties as we often think of disability as losing limb function. However, disability can also include loss of sight, loss of hearing, or loss of mental function (whether it be stroke, or mental health.. etc). One colleague in a non-surgical specialty has also claimed for cancer, needing to attend frequent treatment sessions and couldn't be there for clinic. Even if you were in a less technical specialty like FM or Psych, you could still work in a wheelchair, but it would be much harder to do those specialties if you had memory or hearing loss.
2) I also looked into group level rates and individual step options - both were more expensive: group level rates don't come with the residents discount (I don't know why they didn't extend the discount to level) and for individual plans, generally step tends to be more costly than a fixed level rate.
Hope this helps!
update to 2024 - own occupation - if you are disabled, you can work in another field and collect all your DI. If you are Regular Occupation, if you start working in another area , it will reduce your DI.
How to find a broker who is specialising for disability for docs in Canada? WCI has his list for USA, anything similar in Canada? Cheers
In Canada we don't really have a list similar to WCI. I would suggest asking your colleagues as disability brokers can vary across province and some provincial medical organizations can provide DI as well.