After working in the disability insurance industry for more than two decades, I’ve come across my share of success stories of people who benefitted from purchasing disability insurance.
I’ve also come across situations where people chose not to purchase or accept a policy that had severely negative consequences. Two such stories come to mind.
The first story is about an orthopedic surgery resident. I met him when he was still in training and he purchased a disability policy to protect his future income.
As a result of purchasing his disability insurance policy, he was able to maintain his mortgage and student loan payments, collect his disability benefits and retain all of the earnings from his research position.
The second story relates to a tragic situation but in a different way. I had a high profile person in the sports world contact me for a disability policy. He had just signed a multi-million dollar contract and needed to insure his income.
He was approved for his policy but it came back with an exclusion on his neck as he was receiving injections for pain relief at the time of the application. He was angry about the exclusion and decided not to take any policy with an exclusion.
Less than two weeks after declining the policy, I was watching the national news in the morning and saw my client, with a neck brace, on the news after being involved in a motorcycle accident. He not only lost his job but his home, too.