A brief about Disability Insurance

by lakemen » Tue Apr 18, 2006 10:00 am
Posts: 1260
Joined: 18 May 2005

Disability helps to determine an employee's eligibility for benefits. A person might be employed under his own occupation or under any other occupation. Incase he is self-employed he could only be taken as disabled once he fails to perform the duties of his own occupation. But if he is employed by someone else then he could only be termed as disabled if he fails to work for any occupation. Apart from these categories a person might fall under a specific category called Partial disability where he would be able to get back to work part-time or even full-time (depicting a loss of income).

Total Comments: 1

Posted: Sat Jun 10, 2006 09:21 am Post Subject: Types of Disability insurance

Do you know that the probability of being disabled is much higher than the probability of dying? A 22-year-old male is nearly 8 times more prone towards disability for 3 or more months than he is to die. So it is important to know the risks of disability and the types of disability insurance available as well.

Two types of disability policies are there: Short-term Disability and Long-term Disability policy.

Short-term disability insurance (STD): If you become sick or disabled to work (say for a couple of months) and do not have enough assets to cover the expenses for that time, STD would be helpful for you. It is a form of income protection that pays a percentage of your income if you become temporarily disabled. After becoming disabled the STD starts payment within one to fourteen days with the maximum benefit period of two years. Most STD policies provide the maximum benefit amount per month.

Long-term disability insurance (LTD): Almost 12 percent of the US population suffers from long-term disability every year. Long-term disability insurance helps to replace income for an extended period. It has a waiting period from several weeks to several months with a maximum benefit period ranging from a few years to the rest of the life. Some people have long-term disability insurance through their employers while others purchase it individually.

Types of individual long-term disability insurance:

1. Non-cancelable
2. Guaranteed renewable

For the non-cancelable policy an insurer cannot increase the rate or decrease the benefits or cancel your policy except for the non payment of premium. So you can renew the policy without an increase in premium.
You can renew the guaranteed renewable policy retaining the same benefits and not have the policy canceled by the company. But the insurance company can increase the rate when it does so for the all policy holders.

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