Accident, Sickness and Unemployment Insurance

• Disability insurance policies provide financial support in the event the policyholder is unable to work because of disabling illness or injury. It provides monthly support to help pay such obligations as mortgage loans and credit cards. Short-term and long-term disability policies are available to individuals, but considering the expense, long-term policies are generally obtained only by those with at least six-figure incomes, such as doctors, lawyers, etc. Short-term disability insurance covers a person for a period generally up to six months, paying a stipend each month to cover medical bills and other necessities.
• Long-term disability insurance covers an individual's expenses for the long term, up until such time as they are considered permanently disabled and thereafter. Insurance companies will often try to find other ways to employ the person and reintegrate them back into the work force in preference to and before declaring them unable to work at all and therefore totally disabled. Insurance companies, for obvious reasons, frequently go to great lengths, including undercover surveillance via videocam and repeated independent medical evaluations by company doctors, in hopes of avoiding the necessity of paying permanent disability stipends to a claimant.
• If you are in the market to purchase long-term disability insurance, try to find out whether the prospective insurer has ONLY their own doctors handle ALL claims (including the questionable ones), or whether they hire out to firms who perform medical file reviews and Independent Medical Examinations, and whose doctors have nothing to gain or lose regardless of the opinion they derive from looking at your records or performing an exam. Your claim, should it eventuate to be disability of a permanent nature, is often more likely to be approved if "questionable" claims (those that don't involve loss of all four limbs) are hired out to independent firms for file reviews and/or IMEs as opposed to always being handled by inhouse doctors working solely for the insurance company. Independent companies, such as University Disability Consortium, for instance, perform medical file reviews and IMEs for insurance companies, plaintiff and defense attorneys, among others, and because they have no stake or say-so regarding the final determination of a claimant's disability status, provide totally unbiased reports and IMEs and are, as a result, more likely to facilitate a desirable outcome for the person seeking permanent disability status than are reports and exams performed by doctors who work for the insurance company and have a great deal to gain or lose (e.g., bonuses, their jobs) when disability claims are upheld. So, caveat emptor: beware the practices of your prospective provider regarding claims of total disability prior to handing over those exhorbitant fees they demand per LTD (long-term disability) policy.
• Disability overhead insurance allows business owners to cover the overhead expenses of their business while they are unable to work.
• Total permanent disability insurance provides benefits when a person is permanently disabled and can no longer work in their profession, often taken as an adjunct to life insurance.
• Workers' compensation insurance replaces all or part of a worker's wages lost and accompanying medical expenses incurred because of a job-related injury.