Occupational Health Insurance Plans: The Facts

If you are ever injured on your job, do you know what your insurance will and will not pay for? If you don't know the answer to this question, you are nor alone. Most people know that they are covered against accidents on their job, but have never taken the time to sit down and completely review their policies. Sadly they only find out that they were not covered for a particular item when it's too late to do anything about it.

Let's look at a hypothetical example. John works for a small home construction company. One day while he's working on a roofing project, he slips on some loose shingles and shoots himself in the hand in the process. Unfortunately the small company that he works for is not able to offer health insurance. But there's no need to worry because john recently purchased an occupational accidental insurance policy to cover himself in the event that something like this were to happen to him.

Many of us are familiar with workman's compensation insurance, which is very similar to the type of insurance that John decided to buy in the example above. As a matter of fact, in some states companies are allowed to offer their employees occupational accident insurance in place of a workman's compensation policy. In some cases the coverage will actually exceed that provided by in many other types of plans. If you decide to go with a more generous coverage plan, you can expect to have a higher premium cost, just as with any other type of policy that you may already be familiar with.

Most of these types of policies will usually have some type of elimination period to choose from, which will normally range from 0 -1 year. Keep in mind the fact your premiums will get higher the more you decide to decrease the elimination period. Studies have shown that a person is much more likely to use occupational accident insurance over any other type of policy, because their elimination period will only be 1-2 weeks, when compared to an elimination period of several months to a year with any other type of policy.

People who work in some of the more dangerous occupations such as construction, factory work, or other "blue collar" occupations, can usually expect to have a more expensive premium than those who work in occupations where they are not subjected to dangerous situations on a regular basis. This is simply due to the fact that the risk of injury is so much higher in the aforementioned occupations.

Take john for example in our illustration above. He is much more likely to be injured than someone who answers phones in an office for a living. As a result, he is much more likely to find occupational accident insurance to be something that will fit his needs.

Last but not least, if you are considering an occupational health insurance policy, be careful that you talk to several different companies to make sure that you find the plan that is right for you, and that you find a plan that is affordable for your particular budget.