The results of recent research are underscoring the importance of employer sponsored coverage.
A new study’s results were issued this week and have highlighted the importance of disability insurance that is sponsored by employers when it comes to the health and financial wellbeing of American workers.
It showed that only one in three private sector employers is currently offering long term disability coverage.
Despite the fact that this is the case, the Social Security Administration’s own data suggests that one in every four workers in the United States will need to use their disability insurance coverage at some point during their working lives. The analysis of the survey data for the study was conducted by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA). The CFA’s executive director, Stephen Broback, stated that this form of coverage “is a critically important part of the social safety net.”
Disability insurance surveys are consistently showing the vital nature of this coverage for workers.
According to Broback, surveys are consistently showing that the benefits for workers from disability insurance have “played an essential role in protecting their emotional and financial lives.”
Unum Group – based in Chattanooga and the largest disability insurance company in the world – paid the CFA $40,000 in order to conduct the study and analyze the data that it produced with regards to the impact of the coverage on beneficiaries. Broback said that this study’s findings urge “all employers to offer the option of obtaining disability coverage.”
The survey also revealed that even when disability insurance has not been sponsored by the employer, many workers would seek it out for themselves if they could only receive the more appealing group rates that would have been available through their employers if it had been offered there. The majority of long term coverage plans cost workers between $10 and $30 per month.
The importance of this disability insurance survey is underscored by the data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and another survey from Mathew Greenwald & Associates, which showed that 39 percent of workers in the private industry have short-term coverage through their employers, 33 percent have long-term coverage through their employers, an estimated 650,000 disabled workers received employer sponsored long term benefits last year, and the average monthly short-term coverage premiums is $18.