Does insurance cover ambulance rides?

 Accident insurance can help pay for ambulance rides if your health insurance doesn't cover them.

If you need medical help right away, you will probably be taken to the hospital by ambulance. Your insurance may not pay for an ambulance ride, and ambulance rides are no longer free. That means that people who need an ambulance for a medical emergency may have to pay for one. If your health insurance doesn't cover ambulance rides, you can get extra coverage like accident insurance to help pay for them.

Ambulances aren’t free

Not even 40 years ago, most rides in an ambulance were free. ¹ That's because ambulances and paramedic care were treated the same as fire and police services. The town or city paid for the ambulance service the same way it paid for and regulated the fire service and police service. But ambulance services are now run by private companies, and most cities and states hire private companies to provide ambulance services. There is no set price for an ambulance ride, so each company can charge whatever they want. Some cities and states like to work with certain contractors whose services are mostly paid for by private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. In one place, the cost of an ambulance with insurance might be almost nothing, but in another, it might be a lot.

Limited choices for consumers

Another reason why ambulance costs are so high is that people don't really get the chance to shop around. When someone has a medical emergency and calls 911, they don't have time to ask how much the ambulance will cost or if it's covered by their insurance so they don't get a huge bill.

When people are moved between hospitals or taken from one hospital to another for treatment, they don't get to choose their ambulance service. In an emergency, a person in trouble will be taken by an ambulance to the nearest hospital. But once the person is stable, they may be moved to a different hospital where they can get better care or care from a specialist.

What to do when you get an ambulance bill

If you have a medical emergency and the ambulance bill is a lot, the first thing you should do is check with your insurance company to see how much they will pay. Coverage for an ambulance depends on different things that are different for each insurance company. In some cases, your insurance company may pay a big chunk of that bill. But if you haven't yet paid your deductible for the year, you may have to pay the whole bill. Most of the time, insurance companies won't start paying for your medical costs and fees, like ambulance rides, until you've paid your full deductible.

Accident insurance gives you lump-sum cash benefits directly to you, not to doctors or hospitals, if you need extra help with medical costs and does health insurance cover ambulance rides and visits to the emergency room. If you get hurt in an accident, you can use this money to pay for out-of-pocket medical costs or non-medical costs like child care, transportation to a therapist, rent, or groceries. The amount of your benefit depends on what was wrong with you, how bad it was, how it was treated, and what kind of insurance you have.

What is accident insurance?

Accident insurance is supplemental insurance. It's a type of insurance that fills in the gaps between the other kinds of insurance you have. Only costs that are directly related to your care are covered by medical health insurance. If you need to stay in the hospital for a few days because of a medical emergency, your health insurance will pay the hospital directly for the tests, X-rays, and other care you need. But you won't be able to work while you're in the hospital, so your bills may start to pile up. You get a lump sum of money from accident insurance that you can use to pay for extra costs.

In case of an accident, there is no deductible. To keep your coverage up to date, all you have to do is pay a monthly premium. You can change the amount of coverage depending on whether you want the insurance plan to cover just you or your whole family.

Don't let something like an ambulance ride or an unexpected health problem put you in debt. Accidents don’t discriminate — anyone can have one at any time. With accident insurance, you can worry less about money and more about getting better.

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