Insurance

Health insurance

Provincial health coverage in Canada is good at what it does: doctors and hospitals. It is the costs around those — prescriptions, dental, physiotherapy, and the income you stop earning while you recover — that land on the household. The four kinds of cover below deal with different parts of that gap.

What We Arrange

Four kinds of health cover

Disability insurance

An accident or an illness can stop you earning for a few months or for years, and it tends to raise your expenses at the same time as it cuts your income. Disability cover — sometimes sold as lifestyle protection — pays you a monthly benefit while you cannot work, set as a percentage of your pre-disability income.

If you have cover through work, read the booklet before you rely on it. Workplace disability commonly applies only while you remain an employee, and short-term and long-term benefits are often separate things with different rules. For anyone self-employed the question does not arise: there is no workplace policy, and the cover has to be arranged personally. More on disability insurance.

Critical illness insurance

Survival rates for cancer and cardiovascular disease have improved a great deal. That is the good news, and it is also the reason this product exists — surviving means a recovery, and recovery costs money for months after the medical treatment has finished.

Critical illness cover pays a lump sum on diagnosis of a covered condition. It is yours to use however you choose: to stop drawing down savings, to pay for treatment or medication a public plan does not fund, to bring someone home to help, or simply to not think about money for a while. Some policies offer a return-of-premium option, which refunds contributions if you never claim. More on critical illness insurance.

Personal health insurance

This is the one that fills the everyday gaps. Dental work beyond emergencies — cleanings, wisdom teeth, implants — is paid out of pocket in Canada. So are prescriptions outside hospital, glasses, physiotherapy, chiropractic and psychology.

A personal health plan reimburses those, and you choose the level of dental and drug coverage rather than taking a fixed package. If you are self-employed the premiums may also be deductible as a business expense within CRA limits, which is worth raising with your accountant. More on personal health insurance.

Group insurance benefits

An employee benefits package covering health, dental, life and disability for a team under one plan. It is usually the most cost-effective way to give people this cover, because the risk is pooled across the group rather than assessed person by person — and it is one of the few benefits staff genuinely notice.

Plans commonly start from two or three lives, so it is not only for large employers. As a brokerage we can put the same requirement to several insurers and compare what comes back, rather than accepting the first quote. More on group insurance benefits.

Choosing

Which of these you actually need

Most households do not need all four. Three questions narrow it down quickly.

What happens to the income if you cannot work?

If the answer is “we would be in trouble within a couple of months”, disability cover is the first thing to look at — ahead of everything else on this page. It is the only one of the four that replaces a pay cheque, and losing an income for a year does more financial damage to most families than any single medical bill.

What would a long recovery cost you?

Critical illness cover answers a different question from disability: not “how do we pay the bills each month” but “how do we absorb a large one-off cost without selling something”. If you have assets you would rather not liquidate, that is what the lump sum protects.

What are you already paying out of pocket?

Add up a year of dental, prescriptions, glasses and physiotherapy for the household. For some families that number is small and a personal health plan is not worth it. For families with children in braces, or anyone on ongoing medication, it is often the opposite.

And if you employ people, price a group plan before arranging individual cover for yourself — the economics frequently favour the group, and it covers your team at the same time.

Check the workplace booklet before you buy anything. The most common mistake we see is either assuming work covers it — when the policy ends with the job, or caps out well below what the household needs — or buying cover that duplicates something already provided. Ten minutes with the benefits booklet decides which of these four are worth the premium, and we will read it with you.

No obligation

Bring the benefits booklet.

Tell a licensed advisor what you already have through work, what you pay out of pocket in a year, and who depends on your income. That is usually enough to say which of these four are worth arranging and which you can skip — including when the answer is that you are already adequately covered.

Talk to an advisor

Health insurance questions

The provincial plan covers doctors and hospitals, and it covers them well. What it largely does not cover is everything around them: prescription drugs outside hospital, dental, vision, physiotherapy, chiropractic, psychology, and the income you stop earning while you recover. Those are the gaps these products exist for.

Sometimes. Read the booklet rather than assuming — workplace disability cover often applies only while you remain employed, caps the benefit at a percentage of salary, and can end the moment the job does. If the coverage disappears exactly when you would need it most, that is worth knowing before rather than after.

Disability insurance replaces income while you cannot work, paid monthly, for as long as the disability lasts. Critical illness pays a single lump sum on diagnosis of a covered condition, whether or not you stop working, and you can spend it on anything. Many people hold both, because they solve different problems.

No — each policy lists the conditions it covers and defines them precisely, and there is usually a survival period before the benefit is paid. Cancer, heart attack and stroke are on every list; beyond those the lists differ. The definitions matter more than the number of conditions advertised.

Often, yes. Premiums for a personal health plan may be deductible as a business expense for self-employed people in Canada, within limits set by the CRA. It depends on your structure, so take it to your accountant rather than to us — but do raise it, because it changes the real cost.

Fewer than most people expect — small-business plans commonly start at two or three lives. Whether a group plan or individual cover works out better depends on the size and age profile of the team, and it is worth pricing both rather than assuming.

Not sure where the gap is?

Call 437-428-2828 and talk it through with a licensed advisor. Mon–Sat, 9am–8pm ET. No obligation, and nobody will push you to buy on the call.

Call 437-428-2828