Residents ask us what a policy costs before they ask anything else, and the carrier flyers they bring to the call answer with a discount percentage and no premium. In 2026 our team generated carrier illustrations across the physician occupation classes at Guardian, Principal, MassMutual, The Standard, and Ameritas, holding the configuration constant and varying age, benefit amount, sex, and state one factor at a time. This page prices a resident policy from that study.
The study ran no resident illustrations, so the $5,000 figures on this page are derived. Each one takes a carrier's age-35 quote at $5,000 a month and scales it by that carrier's own age-28 to age-35 ratio, then applies the resident discount at the rate recorded in our placement grid. The $1,000-a-month figures are different. They are issued premiums on policies we placed, and the figures marked measured are actual illustrations. The study notes at the end of the page cover all three. All of it assumes a healthy applicant in a standard-rate state before underwriting, and roughly 28 percent of the policies we place carry an exclusion or a rating from underwriting (2026 book audit). The illustrations behind the derived and measured figures were run in August 2026.
How much does disability insurance cost for a medical resident?
The residents we place mostly buy either a $1,000-a-month policy that locks in a clean health record, $19 to $56 a month in our placed book on annual pay, or a $5,000-a-month policy that begins replacing income now, $109 to $215 a month for a 28-year-old man and $175 to $313 a month for a 28-year-old woman with the resident discount applied. The $1,000 policy can grow to an attending-sized benefit later where the carrier's increase rider survives a policy that small, and it gets its own section below.
The $5,000 figures come from the 2026 quote study, in which all five carriers priced the two sexes differently at the study baseline. Those figures buy the whole policy, a true own-occupation definition that pays if you can no longer practice your specialty even while you earn a living some other way, benefits to age 65 after a 90-day elimination period, and every optional rider, the cost of living adjustment (COLA), residual disability, catastrophic, and benefit increase riders included. The bottom of each range is a resident in internal medicine or family medicine and the top is a resident in general surgery, because the carrier classes a resident on the specialty declared at application.
The specialty declared sets the occupation class, and on the male profile a general surgery declaration costs 21 to 51 percent more than internal medicine at the same carrier for identical coverage. The resident discount then takes 10 to 20 percent off, depending on carrier. Dropping the COLA rider removes another 9 to 16 percent, though that rider matters most for a buyer in their twenties, since a claim that starts at 32 can run for three decades of inflation. Removing COLA takes the cheapest discounted internal medicine quote from $109 to $92 a month for a male resident and, at a different carrier, from $175 to $159 for a female resident, and the full no-COLA ranges are in the table.
| Configuration, age 28, $5,000 a month, Texas (derived) | Internal medicine, male | Internal medicine, female | Surgical, male | Surgical, female |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| With resident discount | $109 to $143 | $175 to $207 | $155 to $215 | $242 to $313 |
| Discounted, without COLA | $92 to $128 | $159 to $186 | $130 to $193 | $203 to $280 |
Monthly premium ranges across the five major carriers we place, derived from the 2026 quote study, with each carrier's resident discount applied at the rate recorded in our placement grid. Internal medicine uses each carrier's class for internal medicine, family medicine, and hospitalists, and surgical uses each carrier's class for general surgeons. How the age scaling, the discount, the COLA rows, and the female figures are derived is explained in the study notes at the end of the page.
The spread between carriers is wide enough to matter at a resident budget. With the discount applied, the most expensive of the five charges 31 percent more than the cheapest for an internal medicine resident and 39 percent more for a surgical resident on the male profile, and 18 and 29 percent more on the female profile, on identical coverage. And the carrier at the bottom of the internal medicine range is not the carrier at the bottom of the surgical range, which is the practical reason we quote all five for every resident rather than defaulting to whichever company visited the program.
How much more women residents pay
A female resident pays 39 to 76 percent more than a male resident for identical coverage at the same carrier, measured at the study baseline on the physician classes behind this page, which is why every range in the pricing table above is quoted twice. The resident figures apply each carrier's own factor. With the discount, a female internal medicine resident pays $175 to $207 a month where a male resident pays $109 to $143, and a female surgical resident pays $242 to $313 against $155 to $215. Removing the COLA premium itemized on each illustration takes those discounted ranges to $92 to $128 for a male and $159 to $186 for a female internal medicine resident, and to $130 to $193 and $203 to $280 for surgical residents. Unisex pricing exists in some programs and places, including some multi-life arrangements, and where it applies it removes the differential, so it belongs on the list of questions to ask in a comparison.
What a $1,000-a-month resident policy costs
A resident whose only goal is to get underwritten while the chart is clean, for the least money, can buy a $1,000-a-month policy, and the ones we have placed for medical and dental residents and fellows since 2023 cost $19 to $56 a month on an annual-pay basis, $19 to $32 for male residents and $27 to $56 for female residents. Those are issued premiums rather than derived figures, with non-procedural specialties at the bottom of each range and anesthesiology and oral surgery residents at the top, and most of them carry a resident discount and the 24-month mental and nervous limitation (the cap on claims from psychiatric and substance-use conditions), which is part of why they price where they do.
The $1,000 replaces almost none of an attending income, so the policy is only worth buying where the increase right survives it, and that is a carrier-by-carrier question. The Standard waives its usual rule that you buy 75 percent of what you qualify for when the applicant is a resident or fellow, so a $1,000 policy there keeps its Benefit Increase Rider. Every $1,000 resident policy we have placed at Principal under its resident multi-life discount carries the Maximize Your Benefit rider, which allows increases to Principal's full financial limits during the first three policy years with no labs, and after that on a qualifying income jump, so the policy can grow into an attending-sized policy on income documentation alone. At a carrier without a concession like those, a policy this small can forfeit the increase rider, which defeats the purpose, so the carrier choice matters more on this structure than on the $5,000 policy. What the resident buys for $19 to $56 a month is underwriting in training on a clean chart, with the benefit sized to the attending income later, and the trade is that the increase has to be exercised, since a resident who never does ends up with a token benefit.
What the resident discount is worth in dollars
At a $5,000 benefit, the 10 to 20 percent resident discounts the five major carriers offer are worth roughly $15 to $40 a month to a 28-year-old male resident and roughly $25 to $75 a month to a female resident, or about $200 to $500 and $300 to $900 a year, depending on carrier and declared specialty. These discounts generally attach to the policy permanently once issued, so the saving repeats every year the contract is held rather than expiring with training, and at two of the five carriers the window stays open until 180 days after training ends. The programs differ in their mechanics, minimum group sizes, and deadlines, and the five-carrier resident program comparison lays those out carrier by carrier.
Does the specialty you declare change the price?
Yes, and by more than the discount. In our measured quotes at age 28 and $10,000 a month, male profile, an internal medicine or family medicine declaration cost $273 to $302 a month across the five carriers, psychiatry cost $332 to $354, and general surgery cost $364 to $425. At the same carrier, psychiatry ran 15 to 26 percent above internal medicine and general surgery 21 to 51 percent above it. The carrier classes a resident by the specialty declared on the application, and the class sets the rate table the premium is drawn from. Which class each carrier assigns to which specialty is on our physician occupation class grid, and the assignments diverge enough that the cheapest carrier for one residency is routinely a middle-of-the-pack carrier for another.
Declaring matters even when the specialty is undecided. One of the five carriers can place a physician who has not declared a specialty in its lowest physician class by default, and at that carrier the lowest physician class priced 55 percent above its best physician class in our male-profile age-28 quotes. A resident who applies as an undeclared physician at that carrier, then matches into pediatrics, has bought surgeon-priced coverage until the carrier reclassifies. Where the specialty is not yet certain, the application should say so and the carrier's rules for reclassifying later should be part of the comparison.
What does raising the benefit toward the program limit cost?
Derived from the study, each extra $1,000 of monthly benefit costs a 28-year-old male resident $25 to $41 a month and a female resident an estimated $36 to $73, depending on carrier and specialty, so stepping up from $5,000 to $7,500 a month adds $61 to $103 a month for a man and $89 to $182 for a woman before the discount. That puts a $7,500 policy at $205 to $226 a month for a male internal medicine resident and $273 to $332 for a male surgical resident, and at $319 to $360 and $427 to $546 for their female counterparts, before discounts, and because the endpoints of these ranges are not all one carrier's, the floor of one range and the slope of another do not add. In the measured data behind those slopes, $10,000 of coverage at age 35 cost 1.77 to 2.0 times the $5,000 premium at the same carrier, so at three of the five the per-dollar rate falls as the benefit rises, at the other two it is flat, and a small policy never gets better per-dollar pricing than a larger one.
The resident programs publish limits of roughly $5,000 to $7,500 a month during residency with no income documentation, and the future increase rights attached to those policies grow the benefit toward attending income later without new medical underwriting. That means the benefit amount bought in training is a budget decision more than a coverage decision, and the piece that has to be right on day one is the increase capacity, which is covered in our guide to future increase options.
How much more does the same coverage cost as an attending?
A physician who waits from 28 to 45 pays roughly double for the same monthly benefit, on a policy with fewer years to run. In our measured quotes on the male profile at $10,000 a month, the same coverage cost 15 to 35 percent more at 35 than at 28, and another 45 to 58 percent more at 45 than at 35. Internal medicine coverage that runs $273 to $302 a month at 28 runs $345 to $374 at 35 and $500 to $565 at 45, and general surgery coverage moves from $364 to $425 at 28 to $418 to $573 at 35 and $646 to $864 at 45. The age ladder was run on the male profile only, and the female profile only at the baseline, so a woman physician can apply the 39 to 76 percent range from the women's section above as a rough guide.
The premium is the half of the waiting cost you can see. These figures assume a clean file at standard rates, and about 28 percent of the policies we place carry an exclusion or a rating, which is the base rate a clean-chart applicant is trying to stay out of. Training is where charts accumulate, from a therapy course during intern year to a back complaint after a run of call nights, and each of those attaches to every future application once it is documented. The resident who applies with a clean chart keeps a rate class and an unrated contract that the attending applying at 36, the median age at issue across the physicians in our book in the 2026 audit, may be negotiating with their health history to get. The full case for timing is on our residents and fellows page.
The mental and nervous limitation for anesthesiology, emergency medicine, and pain management residents
None of the study quotes behind this page, on the internal medicine, psychiatry, or surgical classes, carry the 24-month mental and nervous limitation, because the study elected the full benefit period wherever the carrier allowed it. Residents declaring anesthesiology, emergency medicine, or pain management do not get that election at most of the carriers we place, which require the limitation for those specialties, and where a carrier prices the limitation our male-profile quotes show it as a discount of roughly 10 percent against unlimited coverage. A resident in one of those specialties can expect a premium in or around the surgical range above, since anesthesiology and emergency medicine sit in a carrier's lowest physician class at three of the five, and a contract that pays psychiatric claims for two years rather than to 65. The mechanics, and which carriers handle it which way, are in our guide to mental and nervous limitations.
What dental residents pay
A dental resident is classed as a dentist rather than a physician, and the dental resident discounts are thinner, 10 percent at three of the five carriers, 15 percent for dental specialty residents at a fourth, and none at the fifth. Derived the same way as the medical figures, a 28-year-old male dental resident buying $5,000 a month pays $139 to $286 a month with the available discount applied, and a female dental resident pays $211 to $484. The bottom of each range is a resident in a dental specialty program at a carrier that classes specialists apart from general dentists, and the top is a general dentistry resident with no discount available. Three of the five general dentist classes behind that range also carry the 24-month mental and nervous limitation the carrier requires for general dentists, so the dental figures are not contract-identical to the physician figures above. The specialty and general dentist pricing behind those figures, at the study baseline, is on our page on what dentists pay for disability insurance.
How we derived the figures, and what they can't tell you
The underlying data is the 2026 quote study our team ran across the five major carriers we place, using each carrier's physician occupation classes. The baseline profile is a 35-year-old male non-smoker in Texas with $10,000 a month of benefit, a 90-day elimination period, benefits to age 65, a true own-occupation definition, and the full rider package, with no discounts applied. We then varied one factor at a time, including a run at age 28, a run at $5,000 a month, and a female applicant at the baseline. The age and specialty figures marked measured on this page come straight from those illustrations. The $1,000-a-month figures are different again, since they are the actual annual premiums on the $1,000-a-month policies we placed for residents and fellows, divided by twelve, and they reflect each applicant's issue age and state and whatever resident discount, mental and nervous limitation, and rider configuration each chose, on rate filings from 2023 to 2026, so they are placed-book figures rather than a controlled comparison. The set includes dental residents.
No illustration combined age 28 with a $5,000 benefit, so the resident configuration is derived, carrier by carrier. Each carrier's age-35 quote at $5,000 is multiplied by that carrier's own ratio of its age-28 premium to its age-35 premium at $10,000, which ran from 0.74 to 0.87 across the physician classes. From that derived figure, each carrier's medical resident discount comes off at the rate recorded in our placement grid, 20 percent at the two carriers whose programs commonly reach it, 15 percent at two, and 10 percent at one, and the dollar value of the discount is stated as a rounded approximation on purpose. Removing COLA means removing the COLA premium itemized on each $5,000 illustration, 9 to 16 percent of the total. Because the study ran the female profile at the baseline only, each female figure is the derived male figure multiplied by that carrier's female-to-male premium ratio at the baseline, 1.43 to 1.76 on the internal medicine and surgical classes, and 1.39 on one psychiatry class, which is where the 39 percent floor in the women's section comes from. For the $7,500 figures we added two and a half times each carrier's measured cost per $1,000 of benefit between its $5,000 and $10,000 quotes, scaled by the same age ratio, with the female per-$1,000 and $7,500 figures and the female discount value estimated by applying each carrier's female-to-male ratio to its male figure, and the dental resident figures follow the same method on the dental occupation classes with the dental resident discounts, which differ by carrier and by whether the residency is in general dentistry or a specialty.
Internal medicine uses the occupation class each carrier assigns to internal medicine, family medicine, and hospitalists, surgical uses each carrier's class for general surgeons, and psychiatry uses its class for psychiatrists, all taken from the carriers' mid-2026 producer guides. Every quote behind those three groups carries the full mental and nervous benefit period. The catastrophic rider was set at the largest amount each carrier's illustration software allows while keeping its no-cost benefit increase rider at the income the study assumed, and the amount differs by carrier at the $5,000 level as it does at $10,000. Monthly figures are the carriers' monthly payment rates, which at four of the five carriers include a modal charge and run a few percent above one-twelfth of the annual premium.
Carrier rate tables are not perfectly proportional across age and benefit level, and fixed policy fees and rider minimums weigh more at $5,000 than at $10,000, so a derived figure can sit a few percent off the carrier's actual $5,000 age-28 rate. The resident programs also carry their own issue limits, exam concessions, and in some cases their own rate basis, and multi-life arrangements can change whether pricing is sex-distinct at all. None of that is captured here, which is why every figure on this page is a study estimate rather than an offer.
The study cannot price you. These are derived standard rates on a hypothetical healthy applicant, before underwriting, and carrier filed rates change. Requote cadence for this page is six to twelve months. This page is educational rather than individual advice, and the number that counts is on a current illustration with your name on it, run at all five carriers with every training discount you still qualify for, which is the comparison we do. Request a resident quote comparison and see where your specialty lands.