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Disability Insurance and the Young Dentist

by Paul Baader

Over the past few years, I have noticed a growing trend in the field of dentistry with respect to the topic of disability insurance. This is by no means geared towards any one specialty, but as a general trend that I am seeing among young dental practitioners, residents, and dental students. The trend that I am alluding to is the “it’ll never happen to me” or the “Superman – I’m invincible” argument that I receive when I speak with young dentists.

The problem that I have with this argument is that I have seen it blow up in people’s faces on countless occasions…. myself included. As we “Generation X” members move into the world of responsibility: a career, a new home, a new family, etc. We find it hard to give up on those pieces of our youth that we truly enjoy, and the responsibilities quite often get moved to the back burner for another day.

Today I am writing to simply relay one story out of many that I often discuss with young dentists. It happens to involve a client/colleague of mine, whom I have known since I first met with him as he was completing his residency at Virginia Commonwealth University Dental School. The original purpose of our meeting was to take care of his need for professional liability (malpractice) insurance. As we spoke that day, we began to delve into the many other insurance protections that are available for a young professional. Among those that we discussed was personal disability income insurance, and its importance as a part of a strong financial plan to protect one’s income.

At the time, disability insurance was obviously expensive for someone who was still living on the salary of a dental resident. As a result, the conversations about disability insurance would continue over the next couple of years. Despite the acknowledgment of my client that disability insurance was something that he definitely needed, he was of the mind set that it would not be a worthwhile expenditure at the time since he was still healthy and young.

In early January 2006, my client and I had a long conversation about his renewed interest in obtaining an individual disability insurance policy. He was “ready.” We went through the various policies available in the market, and what would classify a great policy vs. a sub-par policy. As we spoke that day, we also discussed his upcoming vacation to Colorado. This was often a topic between us, since we are both avid snowboarders and typically both travel out west a couple of times each year for a snowboarding excursion.

In realizing that he had his annual vacation coming up at the end of February, he felt that now would be the best time to protect himself, just in case something happened while he was on vacation. He asked that I mail him the application to review and complete because he did not have the time over the next few weeks to meet with me. Reluctantly, I agreed and mailed the semi-complete application to my client. For several weeks, I called to follow up with him about the application and I received the same answer every time, “I’ll get to it this week, and get back to you.” Finally, I received a voicemail stating that he lost track of time, and he would get to the application when he got back from Colorado…. Famous last words.

The following week I received a telephone call from my client. He was back from vacation…..with a dislocated shoulder and fractured elbow! To add insult to injury, it was his operating arm. Long story short, he ended up being disabled for twelve months with no protection, and no income. To this day we still talk about the incident. He now currently has a disability insurance policy in force, but he continues to kick himself for making such a silly mistake in his youth because he felt that it could never happen to him.

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