sickness and disability insurance

[ahardy66]

I just want to find out what percentage of people have sickness and disability insurance. Please vote!

I'm also interested to know how much a decent policy costs and what in fact a decent policy should pay out for a claim. For instance, I'm considering strongly getting a policy that would pay for my living costs til death if for instance I suffered brain damage.

[ahardy66]

Yes, that problem had occurred to me.

My initial reaction was to do a survey of all the mentally-disabled former contractors I could find and ask them whether their insurance paid out, but such a survey would probably be a little more problematic than this sort of survey here

[tim123]

Personally I can't understand why someone might worry about how they are going to survive financially if they are terminally ill.

I can see why you might need to provide some money for dependants if this happens, but from a personal perspective one of the things that the state does very well is feed and house terminally ill people (it usually comes as a simple add on to the necessary health care, and no-one asks for insurance to pay for that)

tim

[ahardy66]

apart from becoming terminally ill, there's the possibility of becoming permanently disabled.

I called the citizens advice bureau to find out what the state provides in the latter situation and assuming that you either lose your programming abilities or you get your mouse permanently amputated, you can expect to pick up around £200 a week from the state long term (disregarding any initial unemployment benefit, which doesn't last).

For £200 a week, I couldn't afford my flat so I would be looking for insurance that pays out a lump sum to allow me to sort out the accommodation permanently, or some regular payment that covers it.