Surely planning for any eventuality regarding your health is a wise decision; which is why it is essential critical illness insurance cover be considered from a young age. For just a few dollars every week it is possible to protect your family financially should anything happen to you whereby you will no longer be able to provide for them.Insurance providers, acting on the statistical information they receive from research institutes now offer this type of protection to every one of their customers. Studies have highlighted the problem with almost one man in five by the time they retire having a serious medical condition. Women fair a little better with around 15 percent being diagnosed prior to retirement.Studies have shown that our reluctance to arrange a critical illness insurance policy is our inherent belief that nothing bad will happen although we know that even just spending the rest of our lives in  wheelchairs  is not an unlikely event. The most common application of critical illness cover is when it is added to a mortgage to ensure that the repayment continue irrespective of the health of the borrower.These days increasing numbers of people decide to use the Internet to arrange their insurance plans and more recently cover for critical illness has also become available. There are still some teething problems with this type of facility with insurance companies realizing it may not be as easy as they thought. This is because many insurance providers who offer this type of coverage wish to have the applicant take a medical examination by an independent physician to ensure there is nothing untoward right from the start. This is also for the benefit of the claimant because if they need to contact their critical illness insurance provider, they do not want to receive an insensitive person on the other end of the phone line.Smokers are unfortunately treated as higher risk applicants; this includes anyone who has smoked within the previous year, and as a consequence they are placed in a high risk category. Many things are taken into account when dealing with the risk factor associated with any type of policy including the applicant's age, their overall health, whether the type of work they do is dangerous or any activities they participate in, not just whether they are a smoker.The cover that critical illness insurance provides is quite comprehensive, so you can expect it to pay out if you have a terminal illness, if you are laid off from work owing to the condition or if surgery is required. No person can guarantee that they will always be there for their family but insurance plans are one way to ease the burden if you are diagnosed with a critical medical condition.