Disability: Permanently incapacitated
A key feature of incapacity for work is that it is not a permanent condition. If the doctor classifies you as unable to work, the doctor assumes that the condition of the patient can be improved through treatment to such an extent that he can work again. Private disability insurance only pays the agreed pension when this is no longer the case. After all, anyone who is likely to no longer be able to practice their job as they were without health impairments is incapacitated.
In many cases, however, it is not easy to assess whether permanent damage will remain after an accident or illness. With good disability rates, there is a pension for this reason as soon as the disability (BU) is expected to last longer than six months. That is enough for the providers to assume that no improvement in the state of health can be expected in the foreseeable future.
However, the insurance company can check at regular intervals whether the customer is still unable to work. If, contrary to expectations, he is doing much better, the disability insurance can stop the payments. However, insured persons do not have to pay anything back. The transfers also end when the insured finds a new job that is comparable to his previous job. In order to receive the disability pension, the person concerned does not have to be completely disabled, but only have to achieve a BU degree of 50 percent. This means that he has lost at least half of his ability to perform and is therefore no longer able to carry out activities that are important for his job.
However, it is not the treating doctor who decides whether the insured person is deemed to be unable to work, but the insurance company. This uses medical documents and a precise job description to check whether the necessary BU degree is deemed to have been met.