Many people don’t have enough disability insurance coverage and find out too late that New York’s disability program is insufficient.

“It is atrocious,” says James Tissot, a financial planner in Manhattan. People sometimes try to supplement the inadequate state coverage with private policies, but fall into a trap: They discover a cheap policy won’t pay if someone is unable to do his or her job – but could still do another other kind of work.

A quality policy will pay the specialized professional when he or she can’t do a job because of a disability. Tissot lists three types of disability insurance: own occupation, the highest quality, any occupation suited by training or education, and any occupation, which is the cheapest.

The right disability insurance can be very important for someone in a high income, specialized profession. That’s because the average worker is more likely to suffer some form of disability than death.