Existing &
Association Coverage
You may already have access to insurance or benefits through your university, a professional association, a family plan or another group arrangement. Before considering anything additional, it is important to understand what protection you already have, how it works and whether it would continue to meet your needs if illness or injury interrupted your medical training.
What You Already Have
What You Already Have
Start With
What You Have
Medical students can encounter several different types of insurance and benefits throughout their training. Coverage may be available through a university or student plan, a professional association, a spouse or family member’s plan, employment or another group arrangement.
These plans can provide valuable protection, but they do not all serve the same purpose. Health and dental benefits, for example, generally help with eligible medical expenses. Disability insurance is designed for a different risk: providing income when an illness or injury prevents you from working or, depending on the policy, continuing your training.
Professional associations can also provide access to insurance designed specifically for members of the medical profession. In Ontario, for example, medical students who join the Ontario Medical Association currently have access to student insurance options that include disability and life coverage.
Having access to association coverage does not by itself answer whether you are adequately protected. The important step is to understand the actual policy: what benefit it provides, when it would pay, how long coverage could continue and what happens as you move from medical school into residency and eventually practice.
Know What Your
Coverage Does
Look beyond the fact that you are covered. Start with the terms that determine how useful it could actually be.
What monthly benefit could you receive? How long would you need to be disabled before benefits begin? How does the policy define disability? How long could benefits continue? Are there exclusions, limitations or other sources of income that could affect the amount you receive?
These details matter because two plans that both describe themselves as disability coverage can respond very differently to the same situation.
Understand what happens when your circumstances change.
Association and group coverage can be an important part of your protection, but eligibility and coverage are generally connected to the terms of the group arrangement. Depending on the plan, coverage, premiums or eligibility can change as you move between organisations or career stages. Individually owned disability coverage can instead be designed to remain with you as your career changes, subject to the terms of the policy.
The goal is not to assume that association coverage is insufficient, or that additional coverage is automatically necessary. It is to understand how the protection you already have fits alongside your financial obligations, debt and future earning potential, and to review it again as you move from medical school to residency and into practice.
To better understand the features that determine how disability coverage works, read Disability Insurance for Medical Students.
Not Sure What
You Have?
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