As as public service to visitors of our Disability Insurance Blog, we are offering these top ten ways to avoid disabling accidents and illnesses during the holiday season:

1.  Don’t drink and assemble toys, especially those you need to plug in.

2.  Don’t stand under the mistletoe at an office party.  The spouse of the person standing with you under the mistletoe might be present, which might result in broken bones.

3.  Don’t decorate your roof alone.  Watch “National Lampoon Christmas Vacation” for details.

4.  If you’re weak of heart, avoid the mall on Black Friday or December 24th.  If you must go, don’t forget your flak jacket.

5.  Drive defensively INSIDE Costco.  Those flat carts really hurt!!

6.  No matter how anxious you are to set it up, that 60 inch Flat screen TV is really heavy.  Get help.

7.  STAND AWAY FROM THAT FRUITCAKE!!!

8.  Yes, the person who snuck into the parking spot at the mall you were patiently waiting for is a jerk, but it’s not worth a fist fight.  Get another spot.

9.  Do not look up the chimney on Christmas eve.  What if he really does come down there?

10. The Santa suit you rented?  Before you put the beard on, consider for a moment what must be living in there.

By following these tips, we hope your holiday season is accident and illness free.

Wishing you a Happy and Healthy Holiday.

As heart disease is a leading cause of disability, I thought it might be a good idea to present these holiday health ideas presented by Dr. Mehmet Oz on abcnews.co.com:

Limit drinking; never have two drinks in a row

Alcohol is acutely toxic to the heart, Oz says.  It can literally irritate the heart muscle and increase the body’s autopilot response to boost your blood pressure and your heart rate.  The heart’s natural pacemaker gets thrown off, and so does your heartbeat.

“Have one drink of alcohol, then a glass of water,” Oz advises.  That will also make you feel better the next day. because hangovers are primarily the result of dehydration of the brain.

Avoid high-fat foods; never have food in both hands at the same time

Studies show a high-fat meal can lead to a dysfunction in artery lining for 6 to 12 hours after eating.  That dysfunction makes the heart vessel spasm, so if you already have a little bit of blockage, it closes off the vessel even more, and that can lead to a heart attack.

Oz advises avoiding fried appetizers and any fats that are solid at room temperature, such as frosting.  And he has a simple tip to avoid overeating, “Always keep one hand free to shake hands,” he says.  “At no time during a party should you ever have food in both hands simultaneously.”

Stay 6 to 8 feet from a burning fireplace

Fine particulates from fireplace smoke can lodge in your lungs and trigger a clot and a heart attack.  “It can cause spasm of some of the arteries,” he says.

There is no perfect distance because it depends on the room’s ventilation, but he says try to stand 6 to 8 feet away.

Know the Symptoms of Heart Attack

“If you think you’re having symptoms of a heart attack…call 911 and get a chewable aspirin, “Oz says.

For women, symptoms of a heart attack include indigestion, shortness of breath and sweating.  Men are more likely to get chest pain than women are.

And, finally, this is not from Dr. Oz – it’s from me.  The holidays should be a time of joy, so enjoy them.  If you’re feeling stressed during the holidays, take a long walk and appreciate the sights.  Or, perform a random act of kindness toward another.  It works for me every time.

We get quite a few calls in our office from pregnant women looking to purchase disability insurance.  Unfortunately, many insurance companies will not write a new policy for a pregnant woman.  If they do offer coverage, they will exclude the current pregnancy as a preexisting condition.  Future pregnancies could then be covered (provided there is no history of pregnancy complications).

As there are many causes of disability, we often advise to purchase a good quality disability policy with the pregnancy exclusion and then ask the company to add pregnancy back into the policy after the birth.

Insurance companies do not view maternity leave as a disability.  If you are lucky enough to have a policy before you become pregnant, the policy will typically only pay benefits for complications due to pregnancy which prevent one from performing the duties of one’s occupation. Also, as the elimination period (or waiting period) is typically 90 days or longer, a long term disability policy would not be appropriate for your maternity leave needs.

We often advise as to the cost of waiting to purchase disability insurance and this is a great example of this.  The best time to purchase a disability policy is now.

I went to my physician for my annual check-up recently and, as part of the physical, he wanted to review a full blood test I had done as a prerequisite to my exam.  As I was late for a business appointment, I told him I would take the results home and review them myself.  He told me it would be best if he reviewed them with me, as I might not understand the significance of all the results and he would probably want to give me some advice based on the results.  My other appointment was waiting, so I left with the print-out from the lab.

When I got home that night, I sat down to digest the lab results.  While I did understand cholesterol and white blood cell count, most of the tests might as well have been written in Greek, as I had no idea what I was looking at.  After several hours attempting to decipher the information, I broke down and decided to call my doctor the next day to review the results with him.

While this never really happened to me, I’m sure, in this fast-moving world, there are a few of you to whom this story sounds familiar.  I experience a  similar scenario daily with people (professionals, mostly) who take disability insurance quotes I provide for them home to digest, without taking advantage of my knowledge and expertise.  While not quite as technical as a lab report, there are terms and provisions in every disability insurance policy that sound similar, but actually perform quite differently at the time of claim.

If you are working with an advisor who is well-versed in disability insurance, take advantage of his/her expertise.  Learn the terms and provisions so you can choose the right policy for your situation.  It might not be life and death as in my story about the blood test, but it can make a difference in whether you are adequately insured in the event of a disability.

You have to make a choice between two jobs.  They are both attractive in many ways – work you like to do, short commute, great people to work with,  Starbucks right next door (that’s high on my list).  The only difference is in the compensation packages offered:

Job #1 is offering you $120,000 annual income with semi-annual cost of living reviews.

Job #2 is offering you $116,000 annual income with semi-annual cost of living reviews.  Additionally, if you were to become disabled, you would still receive $5,500 per month (with annual cost of living increases), tax-free, for as long as you are disabled (up to age 65).

Which job would you choose?  If you answered #2, you have made a wise choice.  It’s basically job #1 with one difference – you have purchased an individual disability insurance policy.

I often hear this from prospective clients when they look at quotes for disability insurance. Very often, these same people recently purchased a term life insurance policy and are astounded by the difference in the cost between the two policies. “I can get a $1,000,000 term policy for $37.00 a month. Why does the disability policy with a $6,000 monthly benefit cost ten times as much?”

My short answer is, the higher the chance the insurance company has of paying a claim, the higher the cost of the insurance policy. The chance of one becoming disabled during his/her working years is far greater than the chance of dying during the period of a term life insurance policy. Therefore, the cost of the premium has to reflect this difference.

Additionally, the potential payout of a disability policy is usually much higher than a life insurance policy. For example, in the above mentioned disability policy, if the 30 year old policy-holder were to become disabled for the length of the policy term (typically to age 65), the payout would be approximately $2.5 million (without cost-of-living increases).

Clients often tell me they don’t need disability insurance because they are not accident-prone. However, it may surprise you that only 14% of disability insurance claims are caused by injuries. Most are caused by illness. The ratio of claims due to illness is six times more likely to come from illness.

Here are some recent claims filed with a major insurance carrier:

• 2 Lumbar Laminectomies
• Acute Myocardial Infarction
• Alzheimer’s Disease
• Angina Pectoris, Coronary Artery Disease
• Anxiety Disorder, Depression
• Brain Tumor
• Cancer of Lung
• Carcinoma Lung
• Cerebral Aneurysm
• Cervical and Lumbar Back Sprain
• Coronary Artery Disease
• Crohn’s Disease
• Degenerative Arthritis Both Hands
• Degenerative Disc Disease
• Diabetic Neuropathy, Lower Extremities
• Left Brachial Plexus Compression Syndrome
• Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS)
• Lumbar Disc Disease Right Laminectomy
• Lumbar Nerve Root Irritation
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Multiple Trauma
• Myocardial Infarction, Coronary Artery Disease
• Neuropathy, Collagen Disease
• Obstructed Right Lateral Ventricle, Seizures
• Pancreatitis, Neuropathy, Diabetes, Angina
• Parkinson’s Disease
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Severe Coronary Artery Disease
• Severe Headaches, Anxiety
• Thoracic Outlet Syndrome
• Uncontrolled Diabetes

One of the most important definitions in a long term disability policy is the definition of total disability. How the insurance company defines total disability can make a huge difference in how much and how long your benefits will be paid.

Many professionals rightly seek out an Own-Occupation (Own-Occ) disability policy to protect their hard-earned incomes. However, when is Own-Occ truly Own-Occ? Many companies advertise their disability policies as Own-Occ policies and the unsuspecting consumer often considers them to all be the same.

A true Own-Occ definition will look something like this:

Total disability means that, solely due to injury or sickness, you are not able to perform the material and substantial duties of Your Occupation.

Some companies modify this definition by adding words such as and are not engaged in any other gainful employment to the definition. We call the former definition a True Own-Occ definition and the latter a Modified Own-Occ definition.

While the addition of those few words seems like a minor adjustment to the definition, the difference in benefits paid can be substantial. For example, let’s say a surgeon with an annual income of $350,000 has a disability policy with a monthly benefit of $10,000. She permanently injures her hand and can’t perform surgery anymore. As she is still generally healthy, she goes into private practice and earns $120,000 annually.

If her disability policy had a True Own Occ definition, her earnings would be $240,000 ($120,000 income plus $120,000 disability benefits) annually (of which $120,000 would be non-taxable). If her policy had a Modified Own-Occ definition, her annual income would be $120,000.

Which definition would you choose?

I speak with many prospective clients who consider self-insuring against disability (e.g. relying on savings, spousal income and/or credit). In every one of these cases, these individuals all make the following two mistakes:

• They minimize the degree of the risk (i.e. how likely it is that they will become disabled) and;
• They underestimate how financially exposed they would be if they were to become disabled.

In regard to the first point, most people consider that a permanent disability is something that will never happen to them. However, the statistics tell us otherwise.

• If you’re under age 35, chances are one in three that you will be disabled for at least six months during the course of your career.
• Men have a 43% chance of becoming seriously disabled during their working years.
• Women have a 54% chance.
• At age 42, it is four times more likely that you will become seriously disabled than that you will die during your working years.

Regarding the second point, if, at age 40, you are earning $200,000 per year and you were to become permanently disabled, the loss of income (without factoring in inflation or increased earnings) would be $4,000,000 through age 65 (the typical term of a long-term disability policy)

Self-insurance works when it comes to handling predictable, low-percentage-type risks that carry modest financial exposure. However, the risk of disability is quite unpredictable and, as you can see from the above information, it is a relatively high-percentage-type risk that carries much less-than- modest exposure.

You can choose to retain the risk (self-insure) or to transfer the risk by purchasing a long-term disability policy. When presented with these facts, most of my clients choose the latter.