Skip to main content
Securian Financial Home

The basics of supplemental health insurance

Learn how it works

An accident, a critical illness, or an extended hospital stay are unexpected events that can turn your world upside down. Thankfully, when that happens, your medical insurance can kick in to help with your recovery.

However, you may have out of pocket expenses or high deductibles that you are responsible for that may require you to tap into your savings which some individuals do not have. That’s where having supplemental insurance comes in handy. It can help pay for deductibles and medical services or other expense that your health plan doesn’t cover. Some supplemental plans provide cash to help cover wages that are lost while recuperating from an illness or an injury, transportation costs due to a medical condition, as well as other living expenses.1

Learn how you can have cost-effective coverage for life’s necessities when an unexpected health issue arises. Supplemental health insurance can help you in the following three scenarios.

You need to stay in the hospital

Nobody wants to go to the hospital, but many people are making that trip. In a recent year, there was a total of 33,356,853 admissions in all U.S. hospitals.2

Hospital stays are pricey. Thankfully, hospital indemnity insurance complements your health insurance, helping you to pay for additional costs associated with a hospital stay. It can be because of a serious accident or illness, an elective surgery such as a hip or knee replacement, as well as hospital childbirth and post-birth.

Along with medical bills and health care deductibles, your supplemental health insurance — delivered in one lump sum — can also cover groceries, loss of income, travel expenses, child care, and even a pet sitter while you’re recovering.

It’s easy to get hospital indemnity insurance:

  • Typically, there are no medical questions or health exams.
  • Depending on the plan, coverage may be extended to your spouse, domestic partner, and/or children.
  • It includes pregnancy coverage.

You have a critical illness

Health care costs come with a high price tag, especially when treating a critical illness. And Americans are rife with them. Every year, about 805,000 Americans have a heart attack;3 close to 1 million people in the United States are now diagnosed with multiple sclerosis;4 and 1 in 3 people will get cancer sometime in their lifetime.5

Hopefully, you will never get critically ill, but if you do, it’s best to be prepared — including financially. Critical illness insurance provides a cash payment after diagnosis of a covered critical illness including the ones listed above, as well as stroke, ALS, major organ or kidney failure, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and coronary artery disease that requires surgery.

As with hospital indemnity insurance, the lump sum from critical illness insurance can go toward the same medical and living expenses.

And it’s easy to get critical illness insurance:

  • Typically, there are no medical questions or health exams.
  • Depending on the plan, coverage may be extended to your spouse, domestic partner, and/or children.
  • Plus, under some plans you get a $50 health and wellness benefit payable annually.*

You have an accident

The ERs across America experience about 35 million injury-related visits each year.6 A dislocated shoulder or a fractured ankle or you child breaking a bone on the playground can hurt a little less when you have accident insurance. You can use your payments any way you wish to help cover deductibles and copays, rehabilitation and therapy, groceries, a mortgage or rent, and other everyday living expenses.

And it’s easy to get accident insurance:

  • Typically, there are no medical questions or health exams.
  • Depending on the plan, coverage may be extended to your spouse, domestic partner, and/or children.

When it comes to your health, a little extra coverage can help you feel better in more ways than one.

Like what you’re reading?

Get articles like this delivered directly to your inbox. 

Sign up

* Product availability and features may vary by state. 

1. MD, Bihari, Michael. “Should You Buy Supplemental Health Insurance?” verywellhealth.com, February 8, 2022.

2. “Fast Facts on U.S. Hospitals, 2022,” American Hospital Association, 2022. 

3. “Heart Disease Facts,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, July 15, 2022. 

4. “How Many People Live with MS?” National MS Society, 2022.

5. “Cancer,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, June 7, 2022.

6. “Emergency Department Visits,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, September 6, 2022.

DOFU 9-2022

2420802