The biggest risk is, I believe, disability resulting in long-term income loss. My US-centric understanding is that private disability insurance that is both portable (not bound to a specific employer) and broad (e.g., covers any condition that causes a significant loss in earnings capacity) can be difficult to find if you’re not in particularly excellent health.
Basefund was working on the broader issue of donors who subsequently experience financial hardship, although I haven’t heard much about them recently. My assumption was that limitations imposed by the project’s non-profit status would preclude the Basefund model from working for people considering larger donations but worried about needing them back down the road if a crisis happens.
Meeting those needs for those unable to access general-purpose private disability insurance would probably require some sort of model under which the donor paid an insurance premium and reduced their would-be donation accordingly. If there were enough interest, I could see one of the big disability insurance shops underwriting a product like that. Probably wouldn’t be cheap, though. Of course, if someone were willing to financially guarantee claims payment, thus removing any financial risk from the policy administrator, that would make the program more attractive for a would-be administrator.
Yeah this was what I found too when I looked into private US long-term disability insurance a while back. My recollection was:
there’s a surprising number of health exclusions, even for things that happened in your childhood or adolescence
it’s a lot more expensive in percentage terms if you’re at a lower income
many disability cases are ambiguous so the insurance company may have you jump through a lot of hoops and paperwork (a strange role-reversal in which the bureaucracy wants to affirm your agency)
I had the impression that it was a great product for some people, meaning those with high income, clean medical history, and a support network to wrestle with the insurance company. But at the time I looked into it, it didn’t seem like a great option for me even given my risk-adverse preferences.
Planning to look again soon so could change my mind.
The biggest risk is, I believe, disability resulting in long-term income loss. My US-centric understanding is that private disability insurance that is both portable (not bound to a specific employer) and broad (e.g., covers any condition that causes a significant loss in earnings capacity) can be difficult to find if you’re not in particularly excellent health.
Basefund was working on the broader issue of donors who subsequently experience financial hardship, although I haven’t heard much about them recently. My assumption was that limitations imposed by the project’s non-profit status would preclude the Basefund model from working for people considering larger donations but worried about needing them back down the road if a crisis happens.
Meeting those needs for those unable to access general-purpose private disability insurance would probably require some sort of model under which the donor paid an insurance premium and reduced their would-be donation accordingly. If there were enough interest, I could see one of the big disability insurance shops underwriting a product like that. Probably wouldn’t be cheap, though. Of course, if someone were willing to financially guarantee claims payment, thus removing any financial risk from the policy administrator, that would make the program more attractive for a would-be administrator.
Yeah this was what I found too when I looked into private US long-term disability insurance a while back. My recollection was:
there’s a surprising number of health exclusions, even for things that happened in your childhood or adolescence
it’s a lot more expensive in percentage terms if you’re at a lower income
many disability cases are ambiguous so the insurance company may have you jump through a lot of hoops and paperwork (a strange role-reversal in which the bureaucracy wants to affirm your agency)
I had the impression that it was a great product for some people, meaning those with high income, clean medical history, and a support network to wrestle with the insurance company. But at the time I looked into it, it didn’t seem like a great option for me even given my risk-adverse preferences.
Planning to look again soon so could change my mind.