Disability Insurance Observer: Ebola

One of the things that’s interesting about Ebola is that it’s not much of a major medical insurance story, at this point.

Just a few people have incurred medical expenses in the United States for actual treatment of Ebola. A few more have received acute medical care for conditions that could have been Ebola but turned out to be malaria, influenza or some bad bug to be named later.

The big, huge costs the affected people are incurring are for expenses that might properly fall in categories of expenses that might possibly be paid by short-term disability (STD) policies, short-term care insurance policies or even some rich long-term care insurance (LTCI) policies that provide first-day coverage.

What people linked to Ebola patients face is the cost of going through an informal isolation period, or a formal quarantine period, with a little telemedicine and a little home health supervision thrown in. Many of these people face a loss of the ability to earn their income through the usual means. They also may face the inconvenience and increased expense involved with getting home deliveries of the essentials of life, such as food.

The few current commercial insurance policies available on the Web that mention quarantine benefits seem to be STD policies.