Physician Insurance · John Mazza, licensed insurance agent
The bills keep coming when the work cannot.
A medical career is built on a license, a schedule, and a household that expects both to hold. This page is a plain reading of the coverage that pays if they do not.
If you cannot practice, the month still arrives. Rent or a mortgage. The loan from training. Groceries. Childcare. Tuition. Partners who still expect a share. None of that waits for a recovery that may take a season, or a career.
Most long stretches away from work begin with illness, not with a single accident. Back trouble, cancer, a heart event, a hand that no longer does the procedure — those are ordinary medical stories. The Social Security Administration’s 2018 fact sheet put the working-life risk on the order of one in four people over age twenty. The Council for Disability Awareness, that same year, said about nine in ten long-term claims start with illness.
A Life Happens survey in 2018 found that seven in ten working Americans could not last a month without a paycheck before money got tight. A physician household often has more room than that — and more fixed cost. The question is not whether you are careful. It is whether the month can be paid if the work stops.
02 · Who it is for
Anyone whose life is built on a medical income.
This page is for physicians. Residents and fellows who can lock language while they are young and still insurable. Attendings who have a hospital certificate and a house that the certificate will not carry. Owners who have a lease, a staff, and a name on the door.
It is also for the household beside that career — a spouse, a parent, a partner who would have to recast a life if the schedule went quiet. You do not need a product vocabulary to start. You need a clear picture of what the month costs, and what the work actually is.
In training.
Issue limits are smaller. Health is often cleaner. A future-increase clause can grow the benefit later without a new medical exam.
On staff.
The group plan is a first layer. It is written for a workforce, not for a specialty, and it stays with the job.
In a practice you own.
A personal check feeds the house. A separate overhead contract can feed the rooms while you are off the floor.
If you want the first note to name a field — surgery, pediatrics, anesthesia, radiology, or another — write john@swa.llc and say what you do. There is no directory of specialties on this page. The work is specific enough without a grid.
03 · What this is
A monthly check, written as a contract.
Disability insurance is income insurance. You pay a premium while you can work. If a covered sickness or injury keeps you from working as the contract defines “disabled,” the carrier pays a stated monthly benefit for an agreed stretch of time.
That check is for ordinary life. Housing. Food. Debt. The people who depend on you. It is not a prize, and it is not a portfolio. The quality of the promise lives in a few clauses: what “disabled” means, whether a partial return to work still pays, how long the benefit lasts, and what you may add later if income rises.
A short-term policy closes a gap of weeks or months. A long-term policy is the one that sits beside a career, often to age 65, sometimes to 67 or 70. On the individual market, short-term coverage has thinned. Many physicians now use paid leave, a cash reserve, and a well-chosen waiting period on a long-term policy to bridge the first months.
Pregnancy language, when it exists, is more often found in an employer short-term plan than in a privately purchased long-term contract. Applying while pregnant can change eligibility or produce an exclusion. Complications of pregnancy are a separate question from routine childbirth. Ask for the contract, not a slide.
04 · The hospital plan
What work gives you, and what you own.
A hospital or group certificate can be useful. It is rarely finished. It is written once for an institution. Rates may be guaranteed for only a short window. Benefits are often reduced by other income — Social Security disability, workers’ compensation, no-fault recoveries, and sometimes other group or association plans. If the employer paid the premium, the benefit is often taxed. Take-home can land well below the number on the enrollment page.
An individual policy is medically underwritten at issue. You own it. It travels when the job does not. If you pay the premium with after-tax dollars, the benefit is generally received income-tax-free. Association plans can look friendly and still behave like group: rate steps by age, a demand that you be totally disabled before a partial benefit, and financial questions postponed until claim.
Read the offset section of any group certificate before you add another group or association layer. One plan can cancel value in the other. The first useful hour of a consult is often a reading of what you already have.
05 · Working some
Many claims are a shorter week, not a full stop.
A surgeon does fewer cases. An internist drops call. Earnings fall, and the work does not. A residual provision pays when income drops by a stated share — often 15 or 20 percent — because of a covered condition. Some forms are basic. Others can continue a recovery benefit after you return full time, if the income loss remains and is caused by the same sickness or injury.
Without that language, a physician who can still do part of the job may collect nothing. That is why “working some” belongs in the first conversation, not as a footnote after a price.
06 · The work you trained for
Will the contract pay if you cannot do your job?
After the years of training, the question is narrow. Will this policy pay if you can no longer do the duties of your specialty? A form that can send you toward “any reasonable occupation” is a different promise, however calm the cover looks.
The wording physicians usually want pays if you cannot perform the material duties of your specialty — even if you later teach, consult, or work in another field. Other earned income does not, by itself, stop the check. That right is drafted, or it is not. A summary page that says “own occupation” may not mean own specialty for the life of the claim.
If you then earn elsewhere
Some contracts still open a claim when the specialty is gone, then reduce the benefit so the check plus new earnings do not exceed what you made before. If a residual formula would pay more, that formula is used instead.
If you stay out of other work
Other forms pay the full benefit only while you are not working in another occupation. If you do work elsewhere and income falls, a smaller, proportionate check may arrive. The choice to work remains yours. The price of that choice is the size of the check.
If the test changes later
A weaker form keeps specialty language for a window — often two years — and then asks whether you can do any reasonable job. The carrier, not the physician, holds that later judgment. That is the wording most likely to end a claim while some kind of work remains possible.
07 · How it works
A conversation before an application.
We do not start with a brochure. We start with the certificate you already have, the work you actually do, and the month the household has to make.
Read what is already in force.
Group, association, or an older individual policy. Offsets, taxes, and the definition come first. Price comes later.
Name the work.
Procedures, call, a hand, a judgment. The definition has to fit that work, not “medicine” as a general idea.
Set the length and the wait.
How long the check should last, and how many days you can carry before it starts. A longer promise and a shorter wait cost more. Medical history can shorten the offer to two or five years. That is still a bridge.
Decide what may be added.
Residual language. A future-increase or benefit-update clause so the policy can grow with income without a new exam. A cost-of-living adjustment that begins after a claim has lasted, often in the thirteenth month. A catastrophic add-on if daily living or cognition fails. A student-loan rider while training debt is still real. Add what the household needs. Leave the rest.
Two frames appear again and again. Noncancelable and guaranteed renewable locks premium and language for the term. Guaranteed renewable alone keeps the policy in force but lets the carrier change rates by class. Carriers still writing true specialty language differ on residual math, mental-nervous limits, and price by field. Comparison is the point of the meeting. This page does not publish invented rate tables.
The first hour is a reading, not a sale.
08 · The rooms and the names
The office still has a lease when you are not in it.
A personal policy feeds a household. If you own a practice, three other contracts sometimes sit beside it. They are not the same product with a different title.
Keeping the rooms open
An overhead-expense policy can reimburse the ordinary costs of the office while an owner is disabled — rent or a mortgage on the premises, utilities, staff pay, taxes, professional fees, malpractice premiums. The span is measured in months, not decades. Waiting periods are often 30 to 90 days, shorter than the 90- or 180-day waits common on a personal policy. Some forms add the cost of a locum for a limited time. A new office can sometimes be issued on expected expenses and refined as real bills appear. This is worth a look if the landlord will not release the lease, or if good staff are harder to replace than to keep.
When a partner cannot return
A buyout policy funds the purchase already written into a buy-sell agreement. After a waiting period, the carrier pays a lump sum or a schedule sized to the agreed value of the disabled owner’s interest. The remaining owners do not have to fund that exit from cash flow. The disabled partner has a defined door, not an indefinite argument about profits that are no longer being produced.
The person the practice cannot spare
Some offices turn on one rainmaker, one surgeon, or a physician assistant who keeps the book honest. A key-person policy is owned by the practice and pays the practice if that person is disabled. The benefit may cover lost revenue, a locum, a recruiting bonus, or ordinary bills. The entity decides. If the rooms go quiet without that person, the risk already exists, whether or not it has a name.
09 · Who John is
John Mazza, licensed insurance agent.
Independent placement. No inventory to move. No securities on this page. The useful first meeting is fifteen minutes: what you already have, what the month costs, and whether an individual contract should sit beside the hospital plan.
John Richard Mazza · NPN 17517529. He works from Summerfield, North Carolina, and places coverage for physicians who want the language read before the application is filed.
Because the household is built on a professional income, and that income can stop while the bills do not. Training took years. The skill is narrow. A workplace plan rarely insures that skill on its own terms. Buying is a way to keep ordinary life standing if you cannot do the work you trained for.
Whatever the household needs that month. Housing, food, debt, childcare, the costs that do not pause. Carriers commonly consider a monthly benefit near half to three-fifths of earned income, subject to issue limits and any group coverage already in force. Many households aim near take-home pay. The right number is the one that carries the life you actually have.
Sometimes it is a start. It is written for a workforce, often reduced by other benefits, and often taxed if the employer paid the premium. It usually stays with the job. An individual policy is the layer you own, with stronger specialty language in most cases, and it travels. Bring the certificate. We will read the offsets with you.
Then residual language matters more than a slogan. If earnings fall by a stated share because of a covered condition, a residual provision can pay part of the benefit. Without it, a shorter week can look like “still working” and pay nothing. Ask how the contract treats a partial return before you compare price.
In the stronger physician forms, it means the contract pays if you cannot do the material duties of your specialty, even if you earn money in another role. Weaker forms cut the check if you work elsewhere, or they change the test after a set number of months and ask whether any reasonable job is possible. The phrase on a summary page is not enough. The sentence in the policy is.
Book fifteen minutes, or call, or write. Bring what you already have — a group certificate, an association pamphlet, an old individual policy — and a plain account of your work and your month. Most individual physician policies are fully underwritten. Some training programs offer a shorter medical path. A confidential pre-screen can show whether history is likely to produce an exclusion before you spend a week on forms.
As a rule of conversation, individual disability insurance is often discussed as about 1 to 3 percent of income. Age, sex, specialty, state, health, benefit period, waiting period, and riders all move that number. That range is not a quote. Level premiums are designed to hold a rate. Graded premiums start lower and follow a published schedule up. Neither is always the better fit.
An exclusion takes a specific condition off the table, based on history known at application. Normal pregnancy, certain mental-nervous limits, and acts of war appear in many forms as standard language. The rest is personal. Women can face a different underwriting conversation. It is better had early.
Book
Fifteen minutes. The contract can wait.
John Mazza is a licensed insurance agent. The first meeting is a reading of the facts — the work, the month, and the coverage you already carry. Call, write, or book a time.
