Abstract
The commercial insurance market has been historically divided into Life/Health insurers (which also write group disability policies), and Property/Casualty Insurers (or Non-Life Insurers) who wrote non-life and non-health benefits insurance policies. Before World War II, life insurance was the most important form of employee benefit, being eclipsed by medical insurance only after the Great Depression. Until the Great Depression, most health insurance replaced wages lost due to injury or illness, and did not pay medical expenses directly. That is, most health policies were disability policies rather than medical expense policies.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes to Chapter 13
These data come from Accident Facts, 1996. There were 26,400 accidental deaths at home, while there were roughly 5,300 accidental deaths at work..
Three other disability “systems ”include some state and local government workers, railroad workers, and veterans injured in the armed services. The veterans benefits are paid on the basis of an impairment rating system (discussed in chapter 7 with respect to Workers’ Compensation). The benefits are not offset by other disability benefits (unlike the other programs), and can, in some circumstances, be relatively more generous than the other disability payments. Railroad workers have their own disability and retirement system; for job related injuries, railroad workers have no guaranteed workers’ compensation coverage, but are free to sue the railroad company (under the Federal Employers Liability Act) for lost wages as well as pain-and-suffering damages, to the extent that the railroad is responsible for the injury.
Transactions, Society of Actuaries, 1982 Reports on Mortality and Morbidity Experiences, 1985.
One final difference between LTD and either SSDI or workers’ compensation is that LTD may employ a separate, more liberal disability standard for firm managers than it does for the rest of the workers. This may be an effort to keep managers on disability, and hence, raise everyone else’s productivity. Shooting the managers at random would be an alternative, but is illegal under the federal Don’t Shoot Managers to Save on Disability Costs Act.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Butler, R.J. (1999). Disability: Short and Long Term, Sick Leave and Long Term Care Insurance. In: The Economics of Social Insurance and Employee Benefits. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4927-7_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4927-7_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-7235-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-4927-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive