Pediatrics Insurance: Premium Discipline at the Lowest Salary in Medicine

Your income is the household's largest asset, and at this salary there is no surplus to self insure it with. A pediatrician who cannot practice loses the $266,000 average and every year it was going to compound into retirement accounts. Disability insurance exists to replace that income, typically up to 60 to 70 percent of pre disability income at issue, and the policy that does the work is the individual own occupation policy: it pays when you cannot do your own job, under a definition written for physicians, and it goes with you from employer to employer.

Pediatric practice is cognitive and relational work, and the events that end it are the ones loose definitions handle worst: the diagnosis that ends call tolerance, the condition that ends a full clinic schedule long before it ends all work. Specialty specific own occupation language is what converts those events from an argument with a claims department into a benefit. Sizing at this salary is discipline, not skimping: take the benefit the budget can hold through the waterfall years, choose the elimination period your finished reserve can carry, and use a future increase option so the coverage can grow when the income does.

Children's hospitals and universities run respectable benefits, and the group long term disability policy inside them is a genuine floor. Read it for the three standard gaps. First, the cap: group benefits commonly cap the monthly payment, and the cap that covered a resident's salary covers a much smaller share of an attending's. Second, the definition: the plan decides what disabled means, often shifting to any occupation it deems suitable after a period, and the benefit is usually taxable because the employer paid the premium. Third, the portability: the coverage belongs to the job. Leave the system, and it ends or converts on the insurer's terms.

Layering is the standard build in this specialty: keep the group floor, add the individual own occupation policy on top, and let the two together approach the income the household actually spends. The window note belongs here too. During residency, many programs host guaranteed issue offers, coverage you can start without full medical underwriting, priced for trainees. That window is the cheapest coverage most pediatricians will ever be offered, and it does not reopen. If you are reading this page as a resident, the resident and fellow page carries the timing.

Life insurance has one job in a working household: replace the income the survivors lose. Sized to that job, it is term insurance, bought for the years the household depends on the income, at a face amount that covers the mortgage, the kids' runway, and the surviving spouse's plan. It is inexpensive because it is honest about its job: pure protection for a defined window.

The established case in this hub shows the failure mode. A pediatrician ten years out was sold a $750,000 permanent policy by her advisor, a product whose premiums run many times the cost of term for the same protection, building a cash value the household never needed while the actual stack sat thin. The fix the episode prescribed was not more insurance. It was the right insurance: stop feeding the permanent policy and carry $2.5 million of twenty year term instead. The protection framework that orders all of this is the Protection Stack, and the definition page for the disability layer is own occupation.

Pediatrics carries a lower malpractice severity profile than the procedural specialties, and the page will say so plainly: claim frequency and payouts in general pediatrics run well below surgery or obstetrics, and premiums reflect that. Honest does not mean absent. The coverage shape still matters. Employed pediatricians are usually covered by the institution, either occurrence, which covers any claim arising from care given while the policy was in force whenever it is filed, or claims made, which covers claims filed while the policy is active and leaves a tail to buy when you leave.

The contract move is to learn which shape you hold and who pays the tail before you ever think about leaving, because the tail on a claims made policy is a real check written at the worst moment, the gap between jobs. Our new attending case household holds claims made coverage with the tail arranged, and it earned full marks for exactly that foresight. Get yours in writing at signing, on the contracts page checklist.

Ryan Inman is a retired financial planner who worked with about 500 physician families. He created the Financial Residency podcast (about 3 million downloads) and is no longer affiliated with it. Financial Fellowship is his sole focus. This guide is educational. Last updated October 2026.